Hookway reviews W 8

Surfed via Philosophy's Other to Christopher Hookway's review (posted August 10, 2010 at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews) of the recently published Volume 8: 1890-1892 of Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition.

Hookway (University of Sheffield, U.K.) is the author of Peirce (1985), Quine: Language, Experience and Reality (1988), Scepticism (1990), Truth, Rationality, and Pragmatism: Themes from Peirce (2000, 2002), and numerous articles.

Hookway begins:

This book is volume eight of a multi-volume edition of Peirce's writings in logic and philosophy that was launched in the 1970s. The edition is important because, unlike most of its predecessors, it presents material chronologically, making it possible to study the development of Peirce's thought. It is also invaluable because of the extensive study of manuscripts and texts which has been involved in its production. Many manuscripts have been re-dated, others have been reconstructed from fragments, and we are now provided with extremely reliable transcripts of their contents. And, as in previous volumes, the editors have included drafts of important published papers and a lot of unpublished material. The current volume contains fifty-six items, ranging from published papers on metaphysics to manuscripts on logic and mathematics and reviews, mostly from The Nation, on a wide variety of topics, including William James's Psychology. Like earlier volumes, it contains a long introduction which gives us yet another chapter in a fascinating detailed and scholarly account of Peirce's life and work as well as providing insights into American academic and philosophical life in the later nineteenth century.

The period covered by this volume is an important one in Peirce's life. His teaching post at The Johns Hopkins University had lapsed in 1884, and he was struggling to earn enough to live on by working for the US Coast Survey and by writing definitions for the Century Dictionary. Around this time, Paul Carus launched a philosophical journal, The Monist. Peirce was in regular contact with Carus, and most of his writings between 1890 and his death in 1914, were either published in The Monist or intended for publication there, including five papers on metaphysics included in the present volume. Although not all are among the most accessible of his writings, these papers presented ideas that he had been working on for ten years or more and that continued to be important for his later work. Because these papers provide the intellectual core of the current volume, my comments will focus on them.

Read the whole thing. http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=20888

New Peirce

Re-posted with updatePhilosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings by Charles S. Peirce, edited by Matthew E. Moore, has been published, according to Amazon. Indiana University Press is publishing it: Catalog page (cloth). Catalog page (paper).

The publisher says "This volume collects Peirce’s most important writings on the subject, many appearing in print for the first time."

It is the first in a new IUP series Selections from the Writings of Charles S. Peirce.

The Amazon item mentions Joseph W. Dauben as a contributor to the book, but there's nothing about that at the IUP site. Here's the Table of Contents. Irving Anellis (a historian of logic) said at peirce-l that he has just received the book and that Dauben does not appear to be contributor.

This is from the publisher's page, also quoted in the Amazon entry:

"Focuses on the major writings Peirce produced that are of greatest significance for a correct appreciation of his larger philosophical agenda." —Joseph W. Dauben, City University of New York

The philosophy of mathematics plays a vital role in the mature philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. Peirce received rigorous mathematical training from his father and his philosophy carries on in decidedly mathematical and symbolic veins. For Peirce, math was a philosophical tool and many of his most productive ideas rest firmly on the foundation of mathematical principles. This volume collects Peirce's most important writings on the subject, many appearing in print for the first time. Peirce's determination to understand matter, the cosmos, and "the grand design” of the universe remain relevant for contemporary students of science, technology, and symbolic logic.

The publisher's page adds:

Matthew E. Moore is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College. He is editor of New Essays on Peirce's Mathematical Philosophy.

Update: I had said that New Essays on Peirce's Mathematical Philosophy, Matthew E. Moore, ed., Open Court (catalog page), 384 pages, trade paper, was "recently published" but in fact it is available by pre-order from Amazon. Thank you to Matthew E. Moore for noting that it's still and very soon to be published. I had bcc'd Moore on a discussion of his new edition of Peirce's writings, and he responded, also adding a list of contributors to the anthology New Essays on Peirce's Mathematical Philosophy:

Christopher Hookway, Sun-Joo Shin, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, Daniel Campos, Susanna Marietti, Claudine Tiercelin, Elizabeth Cooke, Fernando Zalamea, Philip Ehrlich, Jérôme Havenel, and Moore himself.

End of Update.

Moore has written essays including:

• (2009). Peirce on Perfect Sets, Revised. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 45 (4):pp. 649-667.
• (2007). Naturalism, Truth and Beauty in Mathematics. Philosophia Mathematica 15 (2).
• (2007). The Genesis of the Peircean Continuum. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43 (3).
• (2006). Naturalizing Dissension. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3):325-334.
• (2002). A Cantorian Argument Against Infinitesimals. Synthese 133 (3).

2010-11 CSPS Essay Contest

Received from the Charles S. Peirce Society:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

2010-11 Charles S. Peirce Society Essay Contest

Topic: Any topic on or related to the work of Charles Sanders Peirce.

Awards: $500 cash prize; presentation at the Society's next annual meeting, held in conjunction with the Pacific APA (in San Diego, California, April 20-23, 2011); possible publication, subject to editorial revision, in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society.

Submission Deadline: January 23, 2011

Length: Because the winning essay may be published in the Transactions, the length of contest submissions should be about the length of an average journal article. The maximum acceptable length is 10,000 words, including notes. The presentation of the winning submission at the annual meeting cannot exceed 30 minutes reading time.

Open to: Graduate students and persons who have held a Ph.D. or its equivalent for no more than seven years. Entries from students who have not yet begun their graduate training will not be considered. Past winners of the contest are ineligible. Joint submissions are allowed provided that all authors satisfy the eligibility requirements.

Advice to Essay Contest Entrants:

The winning entry will make a genuine contribution to the literature on Peirce. Therefore, entrants should become familiar with the major currents of work on Peirce to date and take care to locate their views in relation to published material that bears directly on their topic.

Entrants should note that scholarly work on Peirce frequently benefits from the explicit consideration of the historical development of his views. Even a submission that focuses on a single stage in that development can benefit from noting the stage on which it focuses in reference to other phases of Peirce's treatment of the topic under consideration. (This advice is not intended to reflect a bias toward chronological studies, but merely to express a strong preference for a chronologically informed understanding of Peirce's philosophy.)
We do not require but strongly encourage, where appropriate, citation
of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Ideally, citation of texts found in both the Collected Papers and the Writings should be to both CP and W.

Submissions should be prepared for blind evaluation and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Cover letter or email should include complete contact information, including mailing address and phone numbers, and a statement that the entrant meets the eligibility requirements of the contest.

Electronic submissions are preferred. Submissions should be sent as email attachments (Microsoft Word documents, RTF files, or PDF files only) to Robert Lane, secretary-treasurer of the Society:
[find email address at http://www.westga.edu/~rlane/ ]. Please include "Peirce Essay Contest Submission" in the subject line of your email.

Submissions by traditional mail are also acceptable. Please mail submissions to:
Robert Lane
Philosophy Program
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118
Attn: Peirce Essay Contest

[To be removed from the Charles S. Peirce Society list-serv, please respond to this email with the word "remove" in the subject line.]

--
Robert Lane, Ph.D.
Secretary-Treasurer, Charles S. Peirce Society
Associate Professor and Director of Philosophy
Department of English and Philosophy
University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118

(xxx) xxx-xxxx
xxxxxxxx.edu
[find phone number & email address at] http://www.westga.edu/~rlane

Triadomany?

Interesting material on threefold divisions' having been taken curiously far in past anthropology was recently deleted by some editors from Wikipedia's "3 (number)" article. It lacks references but is, I thought, worth preserving, but I didn't know where, but then I thought, why not here? (The reason for the deletion was not the lack of references but the editors' desire to strip the article down).

One really would little expect the evolution of kinds of primates or any living thing to exhibit a pattern of threefold division. But maybe it really did seem that way for a while with primates, as the material's original writer suggests (I myself, before its recent deletion, did some mostly stylistic and link-embedding later edits of it at Wikipedia). As a four-ist myself, I would not expect a pattern of fourfold division in biological evolution either! Peirce, of course, had a few things to say about triadomany - in "Triadomany" - wherein he argues that trichotomies are not to be expected to abound in natural history, and that logical division is to be distinguished from, among other things, genealogical division; the text as rendered by the Collected Papers' editors ends with his noting, with a kind of twinkle in his eye, Huxley's division of vertebrates into Ichthyopsida, Sauropsida, and Mammalia.

So here it is, discarded from Wikipedia:

Anthropology

Attempts to recognize tripartite patterns in human evolution were somewhat popular in the early-mid 20th century. Today, with new knowledge about the fossil record and phylogeny, they are all but refuted. However, one must wonder why there ever was a recurring predilection for a tripartite organization instead of some other pattern, whether or not a specific enumerative identity (such as the "three") presented itself.

With the realization that the Bonobo represents another and very distinct chimpanzee, humans are instead being referred to as "third chimpanzee", as among living creatures they are most similar to the Bonobo and Common Chimp.

• 3 distinct species of the genus Homo: 1. Homo habilis "capable man". 2. Homo erectus "upright man". 3. Homo sapiens "wise man".
  • But many additional species are now known.
• 3 distinct species of the genus Paranthropus: 1. Paranthropus robustus. 2. Paranthropus boisei. 3. Paranthropus aethiopicus.
  • But the validity of Paranthropus, although it is possible, has never been unequivocally proven.
• 3 Proconsul species: 1. Proconsul africanus. 2. Proconsul major. 3. Proconsul nyanzae.
  • But P. heseloni has been described since; and the genus Proconsul might not be an ape.
• 3 Pan troglodytes sub-species: 1. Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii (Eastern Common Chimpanzee). 2. Pan troglodytes troglodytes (Central Common Chimp). 3. Pan troglodytes verus (Western Common Chimp).
  • But P. t. vellerosus has been described since.
• 3 types of primates: 1. Prosimians. 2. Monkeys (old & new world). 3. Apes (lesser & greater apes, as well as humans).
  • But Old World and New World monkeys are not a natural
    group.
• 3 social group types of the great apes: 1. Orangutans (solitary - little amount of both sexes). 2. Gorillas (harems - great amount of one sex). 3. Common chimpanzees (live in territories defended by related males - great amount of both sexes).
  • But Bonobos represent a fourth type of social structure, with equal sex ratio but unique hierarchy.
• 3 traditional families of hominoids (apes) : 1. Hylobatidae - include the so-called lesser apes of Asia, the gibbons and siamangs. 2. Hominidae (great apes) - include living humans and typically fossil apes that possess a suite of characteristics such as bipedalism, reduced canine size, and increasing brain size such as the australopithecines. 3. Pongidae - include the remaining African great apes including gorillas, chimpanzees, and the Asian orangutan.
  • But Pongidae are united with the Hominidae by modern science, as they are paraphyletic otherwise.

Material from Wikipedia Copyright Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License).

Graphic Peirce

Long time no post! Happened upon a time upon a Trip to Berlin March 2010 post at the Thoughts in Progress blog of Aud Sissel Hoel. Read her whole post there. She visited a workshop "Peirce's Pictorial Thinking":

March 21 and 22 this year I took part in a scholarly event quite out of the ordinary. The focal point of this event was a tableau of drawings made by the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), exhibited here, in the premises of the Collegium for the Advanced Study of Picture Act and Embodiment (Humboldt University, Berlin), for the first time in history. As it turns out, Peirce drew incessantly throughout his life, quite literally sketching out his philosophical ideas.

Having found that, I searched around a bit and added the following to External links at the Charles Sanders Peirce article at Wikipedia:

Collegium for the Advanced Study of Picture Act and Embodiment: The Peirce Archive, John Michael Krois, Horst Bredekamp, Humboldt U, Berlin, Germany. Cataloguing Peirce's innumerable drawings & graphic materials.

Those are the drawings and graphic materials in Peirce's Nachlass in the Houghton Library at Harvard. The project was initiated by John Michael Krois.

Aud also says:

Similar attempts are made by the Graduiertenkolleg Schriftbildlichkeit at the Free University of Berlin, directed by Sybille Krämer, where Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer is currently pursuing a postdoctoral project focusing on Peirce’s notation systems.

Perhaps many already know about all this, but it was news to me at the time. (I should have posted this sooner, but I didn't find out till after the exhibition anyway.)

Correction: I originally embedded a linked search on Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer and Peirce inside Meyer-Krahmer's name in the quote from Aud, but I shouldn't add things to people's quotes! (Unless they obviously didn't embed a URL, like back in the 1800s.)

Peirce Obituary May 16, 1914

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=RmknAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EQQGAAAAIBAJ&pg=3073,3222890&dq=charles-peirce

Part Three

Boston Evening Transcript, Saturday, May 16, 1914

3

———————————— CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE ——— Some Appreciation of a Harvard Philosopher, First Among American Pragmatists, Who Recently Died in Secluded Retirement ——— Charles Sanders Peirce, second son of the late Benjamin Peirce, Perkins professor of astronomy and mathematics at Harvard University for forty years, and of his wife, Sarah Hunt Mills, who died at his home in Milford Pa., on April 19 last, in his seventy-fifth year, was born in September, 1839, of a family eminent in scientific pursuits and in the higher branches of education. Beginning with Benjamin Peirce, Sr., for several years librarian of Harvard, the sum of the services of the Peirce family in that seat of learning, including that of his son Benjamin and of his grandson James Mills Peirce, numbered over one hundred years. Charles Peirce, from his youth to the end of his life, exhibited in marked degree the family trait of mathematical ability as well as the allied sciences, his mind finally centering itself upon logic and philosophy, but never forsaking mathematical research. Even in childhood Dr. Peirce exhibited remarkable qualities of mind an a profound love of study and research, pursued, however in his own way and by original methods. He appeared to have acquired the art of reading and writing by himself without the usual course of instruction. As a child he was forever digging into encyclopedias and other books in search of knowledge upon abstruse subjects, while discussions with his learned father upon profound questions of science, especially higher mathematics and philosophy, were common matters of astonishment, not only to his brothers and sister, but to his parents as well. Charles however was no prig or pedant. His mirthful, contagious laugh, his keen sense of humor and ready wit made him a bright and ever welcome companion in all gatherings. He was always capable of holding his own with unconscious ease whether among his elders or with simple unpretentiousness joining in the sports of the youngest and smallest. His own choice was for intellectual games, especially chess, of which he early became a master. Mr. Peirce was mainly fitted for college at the Cambridge High School, with one term, prior to the entrance examinations, at the famous school of Mr. Epes Sargent Dixwell, in Boston. He was graduated from Harvard in 1859, among the youngest of his class, and entered the Lawrence Scientific School where he took the highest honors for research work in chemistry which attracted the attention of some of the great German universities as valuable contributions to science. Pure mathematics, astronomy and logic, however, early attracted Peirce more deeply than the more practical pursuit which he then abandoned, and devoted himself to astronomy, passing long nights at the Harvard observatory, and, later, to pendulum observations and computations for determining the earth’s density. His research regarding it was noted with warm praise by the French Academy and by other European scientists. It was during this period of Peirce’s practical work in the field of physics, that he published his book on “Photometric Research” besides many articles on the history of science, metaphysics, psychology, gravitation, chemistry, map projection and astronomy. He also edited his father’s work on “Linear Associative Algebra,” a mathematical contribution which was contemporaneously considered to ascend so far into the realm of pure mathematics as to make it improbable that it could ever find a reading public sufficient to warrant further publication than the one hundred lithographed copies which constituted the original edition. At this time also he was employed by the publishers of the Century Dictionary to prepare the greater part of the scientific definitions for that great lexicon. Research in the domain of his chosen subject, logic, and the art of reasoning, had long been drawing Peirce away from the more practical and immediately profitable paths of science. He had already formulated and given to the world the principle of logic which he was first among Americans to call “Pragmatism” and which the late Professor William James of Harvard afterward amplified and carried to higher development. In 1887 Mr. Peirce, feeling the burden and friction of the busily active world too distracting for the pursuit of his studies, retired to the place he bought in Pike Country, Pennsylvania, where, surrounded by his voluminous library, he immersed himself in the sea of philosophic thought from which he rarely emerged, living in Milford the life of a recluse and an anchorite. During the pursuit of his studies this profound thinker contracted a gnawing and a progressing malady which greatly impaired the regular continuity of his labors defeating the full fruition of the brilliant promise of his life. His pursuits could not win for him popular applause, but to those who knew him well he gave a light which can never fade. ————————————

Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, ’59

http://books.google.com/books?id=mJIBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA549

Harvard Alumni
Bulletin

Volume XVI

Wednesday, May 27, 1914

Number 34

[Pages 549-50]

Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce, ’59

By George F. Becker, ’68, U. S. Geological Survey.

IT would be difficult to bring home to the average reader of American periodicals a due sense of the loss sustained by the community on April 19 in the death of Charles Peirce at the age of 75, for his work was done in the least popular realms of knowledge: Logic, mathematics, metaphysics and physics. To the worshipers of the Golden Calf his name is meaningless, but none the less he has added to the sum of human knowledge and to the fecundity of human thought, leaving the world the wiser for his existence.

From boyhood he showed great aptitude for learning and a very unusual originality, qualities which he inherited from his father, Benjamin, the leading American mathematician of his clay. Benjamin Peirce’s most brilliant achievement was an investigation on linear associative algebras. These form a large group of methods of mathematical reasoning each distinct from the rest, and including as special cases ordinary algebra, infinitesimal calculus and quaternions. In this investigation Charles collaborated, and to it he made extensive additions after his father’s death. Charles himself also wrote a memoir of great originality on the algebra of logic, of which the purpose is to apply the infallible mechanism of mathematics to the elucidation of logical relations, whencesoever these may be derived. Peirce was not the first to make such an attempt, but is said to have attained a far greater measure of success than his predecessors. On the whole, these memoirs and others which need not be mentioned here show that he was quite as able a mathematician as his father.

C. S. S. Peirce, ’59.

Allied to these researches in pure reason, but distinct from them, are Peirce’s two great contributions to philosophy. Of these, the first, is now known as “pragmatism”; his own term, but first used in print by the famous philosopher, William James, with due acknowledgments to the originator. This ambiguous term denotes a method of thought founded upon the very simple and fundamental generalization, now called by so eminent a philosopher as Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, “Peirce’s Principle”, viz.; Every truth has practical consequences and these are the test of its truth. To the uninitiated this may seem a truism, but by purely logical processes it is capable of development into a whole system of philosophy ; or conversely, a certain philosophic system is reducible in ultimate analysis to “Peirce’s Principle.”

Not less important is his treatment in a series of papers, published during the last decade of the last century, of the statistical method as applied to the nature of evolutionary processes depending upon the association of entities in large numbers. This method (which likewise underlies most of the very recent investigations into the properties of matter) is proving efficacious in philosophy in the hands of Professor Josiah Royce on the lines laid down by Peirce.

His most important contribution to physics resulted in an increase in the precision of geodetic surveys, which are useless unless they are of extreme exactness. Peirce detected the fact that the flexibility of the stone piers, on which pendulums are swung to determine the force of gravity, is great enough to introduce important errors into the observations, and showed how to apply appropriate corrections.

Passing by his various contributions to astronomy and other subjects, be it mentioned that Peirce was responsible for nearly all of the excellent definitions of mathematical terms in the two editions of the Century Dictionary, as well as those on mechanics, astronomy, logic and metaphysics. In this enormously laborious and responsible task he came closer to the habitat of the man of ordinary education than in any of his other works.

Genius Peirce indubitably had; he also had its eccentricities; they stood sadly in his way, diminished his intellectual output, and exposed him to privations. Though he could be very charming, he was so intensely individualistic that cooperation was for him almost an impossibility, he could not “get along” with associates, and, as he grew older, ill-health aggravated his peculiarities. To his friends these were an inconvenience, speedily forgotten; to himself they were a misfortune, and this is the only considerable reason for regretting them or referring to them ; they deprived him of the popularity, prosperity, and honors to which his great achievements would have entitled him.

Peirce was for many years a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His official biography will be prepared by a colleague eminently fitted for that difficult task, Josiah Royce.