The Philosophy of Peirce

Abstract

C.S. PEIRCE was a thinker of rare originality and depth, a logician brought up, as he said, in a laboratory. Nevertheless, though he influenced the development of mathematical logic in his lifetime, his general influence on contemporary thought has been almost entirely indirect, through friends, such as James, Royce and Dewey. His published writings, mostly short articles, have attracted little attention. The present reviewer has to confess that when he read a selection of these reprinted in 1923 under the title “Chance, Love and Logic” he failed to realize their value. Recently the great mass of manuscripts he left has been published, but few are likely to wade through the whole six volumes of his complete works. It is to be hoped, therefore, that this selection of published and unpublished work, with an excellent introduction by the editor, will make his work better known; for it is worth knowing in spite of its peculiar defects. Every now and again Peirce stated an important principle with force and clarity; but when he came to develop and explain it he tended to be pedantic and even confused and irrelevant. He had many of the faults as well as a good deal of the genius of Kant. He also suffered from being fifty years ahead of his time—he died in 1914 at the age of seventy-five. It must suffice here to mention three of his outstanding contributions to thought to be found in this book. The Philosophy of Peirce Selected Writings. Edited by Dr. Justus Buchler. (International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. xvi + 386. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd., 1940.) 16s. 6d. net.