Charles Sanders Peirce ( /ˈpɜrs/ like "purse"; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist, sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". He was educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for 30 years. Today he is appreciated largely for his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, scientific methodology, and semiotics, and for his founding of pragmatism. In 1934, the philosopher Paul Weiss called Peirce "the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician".
An innovator in mathematics, statistics, philosophy, research methodology, and various sciences, Peirce considered himself, first and foremost, a logician. He made major contributions to logic, but logic for him encompassed much of that which is now called epistemology and philosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics, of which he is a founder. As early as 1886 he saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits; the same idea as was used decades later to produce digital computers.
Read more about Charles Sanders Peirce: Life, Reception, Works, Mathematics, Philosophy, Philosophy: Logic, or Semiotic, Philosophy: Metaphysics, Science of Review
Famous quotes containing the words sanders peirce, charles sanders, sanders and/or peirce:
“Theology, I am persuaded, derives its initial impulse from a religious wavering; for there is quite as much, or more, that is mysterious and calculated to awaken scientific curiosity in the intercourse with God, and it [is] a problem quite analogous to that of theology.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief we are inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)