The American Aristotle
aeon.co
aeon.co
> The importance and range of Peirce’s contributions to science, mathematics and philosophy can be appreciated partially by recognising that many of the most important advances in philosophy and science over the past 150 years originated with Peirce: the development of mathematical logic (before and arguably better eventually than Gottlob Frege); the development of semiotics (before and arguably better than Ferdinand de Saussure); the philosophical school of pragmatism (before and arguably better than William James); the modern development of phenomenology (independently of and arguably superior to Edmund Husserl); and the invention of universal grammar with the property of recursion (before and arguably better than Noam Chomsky...).
> Beyond these philosophical contributions, Peirce also made fundamental discoveries in science and mathematics. A few of these are: the shape of the Milky Way galaxy; the first precise measurement of the Earth’s gravity and circumference; one of the most accurate and versatile projections of the 3D globe of the Earth onto 2D space; the chemistry of relations and working out the consequences of the discovery of the electron for the periodic table; the axiomisation of the law of the excluded middle, or Peirce’s Law: ((P→Q)→P)→P); existential graphs and the transformation of mathematics into an (quasi-)empirical component of studies on cognition; one of the first studies of the stellar spectra, particularly the spectral properties of argon; the invention of the then most accurate gravimetric pendulum; the first standardisation of the length of the metre by anchoring it to the length of a wavelength of light (which he figured out via his own experiments in multiple stations around Europe and North America).
I wanted to share a classic dialogue put together by Susan Haack, "We Pragmatists..." Peirce and Rorty in Conversation—using only the philosophers' actual words—contrasting Peirce's pragmatism with Rorty's of ~100 years later. It's like night and day, with Peirce = day! It gives a very good sense of how they talked and their wide differences. And it's very funny.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312041697_We_Pragma...
Frege and Peirce worked out similar aspects of mathematical logic in around the same years. Peirce's work was better known for a while through the work of Ernst Schröder, but then Frege's work became equally known through the work of Bertrand Russel. It's difficult to say which of the two influenced their contemporaries the most, but it's clear that no one person (and not Frege and Peirce together) fully deserves the credit for "the development of mathematical logic". "Arguably" one could claim such "firsts" all the way back to Leibnitz, but what is the point of that? In my opinion, in the paragraph you quote, the linked article indulges itself with some hero worship which ultimately demeans the value of its subject. It makes Peirce sound like some kind of famous guru. In my experience, this kind of thing is common in American writings and almost entirely absent from European work, an interesting divide that it may be worth exploring in depth.
The following article is an attempt at a timeline of the development of first-order logic by different authors:
The Emergence of First-Order Logic
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-firstorder-emergenc...
I'm no expert, but you missed the part where Peirce was written out of the history of logic entirely for most of the 20th C[0], I guess due to the centrality of Frege/Russell in the Anglo/analytic tradition.
The article doesn't seem to me to claim that "one person fully deserves the credit". "What is the point of that"? I guess to be able to give readers new to Peirce, in a couple of paragraphs, an idea of the breadth and importance of his work. I'm not sure how the article "ultimately demeans the value of its subject", if you mean Peirce. It's not a technical journal article, but a "learn how awesome Peirce was!" article, and begrudging Peirce such articles seems a little, well, more goblyny than queennely.
Thanks for the interesting article!
[0] in English, at least, I mean.
I don't know if it's right to say that Peirce was "written out" of the history of logic, no less "entirely". Personally, as a student of logic, I get my knowledge from sources that are neither Frege, nor Peirce, nor recognisably derived from either one's work. A lot of water has gone under the bridge and modern mathematical logic is something that neither of the two would recognise as their own.
On the other hand, I note that the way I was taught to think about quantifiers (by my thesis advisor, during my PhD) was decidedly Peirce-ian: informally, that ∀ is the big-and and ∃ is the big-or of all variable instantiations to entities in the domain of discourse. So I don't think anything was really written out.
>> Thanks for the interesting article!
You're welcome. For once, an article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that I can read without having studied philosophy. Usually I get bogged down in unexplained jargon very quickly.
I don't see how where you get your logic, or the state of modern logic, or whether the way you were taught to think was Peircian, at all bears on whether Peirce was unfairly omitted from the history of logic.
I don't know to what extent Peirce is left out of accounts of the history of the development of modern mathematical logic. Perhaps you're right about it, but I'm a bit skeptical because it seems to me from the little I've read that both Peirce and Frege produced similar and overlapping work around the same time as each other and independently of each other, so neither deliberately tried to omit references to each other's work, they just ignored each other's work more or less. Peirce's work sure seems like it had a strong following early on. Frege's branch of logic seems to have eventually become established not for nationalistic reasons but because it was simply considered "better" (whatever that may mean). I think Peirce's English-language work would be more favourably received by Anglo researchers thatn Frege's which was in German, anyway.
Not only was Peirce a genius logician who discovered the universal and existential quantifiers independent of Frege, he also formalized pragmatism and semiotic.
Edit: Oh and I forgot abductive reasoning[1], which is shockingly unknown given its utility. I first learned of it from an absurdly smart Raytheon physicist many years ago.
Edit: Some of the language is archaic, so as someone who is merely curious and of a pragmatic bent, I had to use care reading it. For example it was the first time I ever saw the word "prescision," which means the withdrawal of attention.
[1] https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/bycsp/newlist/nl...
Years later, he grudgingly acknowledged, by way of an olive branch, that my abductive reasoning was also a valid strategy. And that'd he'd just let it me do my thing. (Even more years later, he had recreated one of my products, and wanted me to know, after trying a lot of alternatives, my design proved best.)
I was actually grateful for this outcome. My intuition and crazy ideas have been a source of conflict with most other geeks my entire career. I get along great with other types of nerds, like marketing and graphic designers.
I don't know if deductive reasoners can get along with abductive. But I strongly believe most efforts benefit from a mixed strategy.
Deductives are great maximizers.
Abductives are great for busting out of local maximums.
Heh. It just now occurs to me we have a common enemy: the inductives. The purveyors of "well actually" pendantry, FUD, and other forms of bureaucratic sabotage. We'd all be happier if inductives stuck to QA/Test.
Fallibilism seems to be most of Nassim Talebs bit. There are careers to be made on Pierce's observations.
The idea of getting upstream of objects and asking of what are they the effect seemed to be the main cognitive tool the author recognized Pierce as using and recommending. I have read nothing by him, seems like my kind of person, what body of work does one even start with on someone like that?
[1]https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Peirce%20187...
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fixation_of_Belief
It begins amusingly
> Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one's own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of other men.
They were originally part 1 and 2 of the 6-part Illustrations of the Logic of Science.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Charles_Sanders_Peirce
> A young man would hardly be persuaded to sacrifice the greater part of his thoughts to save the rest; and the muddled head is the least apt to see the necessity of such a sacrifice. Him we can usually only commiserate, as a person with a congenital defect. Time will help him, but intellectual maturity with regard to clearness is apt to come rather late. This seems an unfortunate arrangement of Nature, inasmuch as clearness is of less use to a man settled in life, whose errors have in great measure had their effect, than it would be to one whose path lay before him.
...but 18 pages later, I'm still unclear on how to make my ideas clear.
https://www.amazon.com/Reasoning-Logic-Things-Conferences-Hi...
Coincidentally China has been using "真善美"[3] as a motto since at least 2014. I know very little about scholarship in China, does anyone know if Peirce is studied there more than he is in the west?
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40319516.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences...
[3] Truth, Goodness and Beauty
> When people discuss the connections between language and cognition such as the possible existence of language in nonhuman species, communication in nature, language acquisition, thinking and human language more generally, cognitive scientists and evolutionary anthropologists usually appeal to concepts such as symbol and sign. A couple of decades after Peirce’s semiotics, Saussure invented his own theory of signs that he also called semiotics though unfortunately with little understanding of Peirce’s work. (Both Peirce and Saussure borrowed the name and interest in semiotics from the 17th-century philosopher John Locke; the term derives from the Greek word σημεῖον, or semeion, for ‘sign’, *‘miracle’*, etc.)
I don't think it a coincidence that the rise of linguistics coincides with a decline in cognition that we can all observe today as reaching a sort of critical mass, in which the mention of a thing is gauged to be a judgment of a thing, particularly in social media contexts. The 20th century (and later) insistence upon "scientifying" everything under the sun is downright insidious.
I often think we'd be better off if there were never such an idea in the heads of any of the people who study it.
> A further foundational contribution from Peirce was his doctrine of synechism, the idea that everything in the Universe is connected, that nothing can be understood in isolation, not even people. This is expressed well in statements such as the following from his paper ‘Immortality in the Light of Synechism’ (1893): "Nor must any synechist say: ‘I am altogether myself, and not at all you.’ If you embrace synechism, you must abjure this metaphysics of wickedness. In the first place, your neighbours are, in a measure, yourself, and in far greater measure than, without deep studies in psychology, you would believe. Really, the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarest delusion of vanity."
This is poorly understood by the author of the linked article, it seems, and a perfect example of my previous point. The author of the linked article presumes that by offering a term to describe a thing, Pierce was making a judgment (positive) about it. That is not the case. Synechism was offered by Pierce as a logical framework of sorts, to limit inquiry to certain possible outcomes. Pierce said that he only thought Time, Space, and Scientific Laws were constants in the universe, and that other less pervasive states were able to exist in isolation from each other.
Describing a thing does not denote a judgment of it. Write it on the chalkboard 1,000 times, 21st century....
I don’t think this is true at all, or supported by any examination of history.
As for the history in question, it's only going back to ~1993, isn't it? And really on pervasive since the early 2000s.