Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce
Peirce in 1891
Born	(1839-09-10)September 10, 1839 Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	April 19, 1914(1914-04-19) (aged 74) Milford, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Alma mater	Harvard University
Relatives	Benjamin Peirce (father)
Era	Late modern philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Pragmatism Pragmaticism
Institutions	Johns Hopkins University
Notable students	List John Dewey Fabian Franklin[7] Benjamin Ives Gilman Joseph Jastrow Christine Ladd Allan Marquand Josiah Royce Thorstein Veblen[7]
Main interests	Logic mathematics statistics[1][2] philosophy metrology[3] chemistry experimental psychology[4] economics[5] linguistics[6] history of science Philosophical logic metaphysics epistemology
Signature

Part of a series on
Charles Sanders Peirce
Bibliography
Pragmatism in epistemology
Abductive reasoning Fallibilism Pragmaticism as maxim as theory of truth Community of inquiry
Logic
Continuous predicate Peirce's law Entitative graph in Qualitative logic Existential graph Functional completeness Logic gate Logic of information Logical graph Logical NOR Second-order logic Trikonic Type-token distinction
Semiotic theory
Indexicality Interpretant Semiosis Sign relation Universal rhetoric
Miscellaneous contributions
Agapism Bell triangle Categories Phaneron Synechism Tychism Classification of sciences Listing number Quincuncial projection
Biographical
Joseph Morton Ransdell Allan Marquand Juliette Peirce Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce Roberta Kevelson Christine Ladd-Franklin Victoria, Lady Welby The Metaphysical Club book Peirce Geodetic Monument
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Charles Sanders Peirce (/pɜːrs/^[8][9] PURSS; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".^[10][11] According to philosopher Paul Weiss, Peirce was "the most original and versatile of America's philosophers and America's greatest logician".^[12] Bertrand Russell wrote "he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever".

Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years, Peirce meanwhile made major contributions to logic, such as theories of relations and quantification. C. I. Lewis wrote, "The contributions of C. S. Peirce to symbolic logic are more numerous and varied than those of any other writer—at least in the nineteenth century." For Peirce, logic also encompassed much of what is now called epistemology and the philosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics or study of signs, of which he is a founder, which foreshadowed the debate among logical positivists and proponents of philosophy of language that dominated 20th-century Western philosophy. Peirce's study of signs also included a tripartite theory of predication.

Additionally, he defined the concept of abductive reasoning, as well as rigorously formulating mathematical induction and deductive reasoning. He was one of the founders of statistics. As early as 1886, he saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits. The same idea was used decades later to produce digital computers.^[13]

In metaphysics, Peirce was an "objective idealist" in the tradition of German philosopher Immanuel Kant as well as a scholastic realist about universals. He also held a commitment to the ideas of continuity and chance as real features of the universe, views he labeled synechism and tychism respectively. Peirce believed an epistemic fallibilism and anti-skepticism went along with these views.