Grammar, logic and community in science: Charles Sanders Peirce and his presuppositional classification of the sciences

 

Patrick J. Coppock
 
The Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Faculty of Arts and Science
Department of Applied Linguistics
N-7055 Dragvoll, Norway
E-mail: patrick.coppock@hf.ntnu.no

"The genius of a man's logical method should be loved and reverenced as his bride, whom he has chosen from all the world. He need not condemn the others; on the contrary, he may honor them deeply, and in doing so he only honors her more. But she is the one that he has chosen, and he knows that he was right in making that choice. And having made it, he will work and fight for her, and will not complain that there are blows to take, hoping that there may be as many and as hard to give, and will strive to be the worthy knight and champion of her from the blaze of whose splendors he draws his inspiration and his courage."

C.S. Peirce in The Fixation of Belief", 1877

 

"...every scientific research goes upon the assumption, the hope, that in reference to its particular question, there is some true answer. That which that truth represents is a reality. This reality being cognizable and comprehensible, is of the nature of a thought. Wherein, then, does its reality consist? In the fact that, though it has no being out of thought, yet it is as it is, whether you or I or any group of men think it to be or not."

C.S. Peirce [Collected Papers 8.118]

  1. Preamble: Peirce the man - a scientist philosopher
  2. Main source materials
  3. On engaging Peirce through his writings
  4. The Carnegie Institution application of 1902
  5. The Memoirs
  6. The classification of the sciences and the architectonic of logic
  7. Kant and the transition from metaphysics to physics
  8. The role of the categories in the architectonic
  9. Peirce's method of philosophical inquiry
  10. On terms and the Classification of the Sciences in the memoirs
  11. The Kantian phase: the First System and origins of the Second System
  12. Discovery of the irreducibility of the three syllogistic figures
  13. A New List of the Categories
  14. Discovery of the Logic of Relatives
  15. The Fixation of belief
  16. Peirce and Mathematics
  17. Quantification Theory and revision of the Categories
  18. Reference list