Charles S. Peirce and the philosophy of science: papers from the Harvard Sesquicentennial Congress

Abstract

Interest in Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is today worldwide. Ernest Nagel of Columbia University wrote in 1959 that is a fair consensus among historians of ideas that Charles Sanders Peirce remains most original, versatile, and comprehensive philosophical mind this country has yet produced. breadth of topics discussed in present volume suggests that this is as true today as it was in 1959. Papers concerning Peirce's philosophy of science were given at Harvard Congress representatives from Italy, France, Sweden, Finland, Korea, India, Denmark, Greece, Brazil, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and United States. Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress opened at Harvard University on September 5, 1989, and concluded on 10th Peirce's birthday. Congress was host to approximately 450 scholars from 26 different nations. present volume is a compilation of selected papers presented at that Congress. philosophy of science and its logic are themes in work of Charles Peirce that have been of greatest interest to scholars. Peirce was himself a physical scientist. He worked as an assistant at Harvard Astronomical Observatory from 1869 to 1872 and made a series of astronomical observations there from 1872 to 1875. Solon I. Bailey says of these observations, The first attempt at Harvard Observatory to determine form of Milky Way, or galactic system, was made Charles S. Peirce....The investigation was of a pioneer nature, founded on scant data. Peirce also made major contributions in fields as diverse as mathematical logic and psychology. C. I. Lewis has remarked that the head and font of mathematical logic are found in calculus of propositional functions as developed Peirce and Peirce subsequently invented, almost from whole cloth, semiotics - science of meaning of signs. Ogden and Richards, British critics, say that by far most elaborate and determined attempt to give an account of signs and their meanings is that of American logician C. S. Peirce, from whom William James took idea and term Pragmatism, and whose Algebra of Dyadic Relations was developed Schroeder.