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<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Morris R. Cohen</span></p>
 
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Morris R. Cohen</span></p>
  
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>The College of the City of New York.</span></p>
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<div class='chapter'>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
 
  <h2 class='c009'>TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
 
</div>
 
<p class='c006'><a href='#intro'  style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Introduction</span>      vii</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#proem' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Proem. The Rules of Philosophy</span>      1</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#part1' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Part I. Chance and Logic</span> (Illustrations of the Logic of Science.)</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-1' style='color:#FFFF;'>1. The Fixation of Belief      7</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-2' style='color:#FFFF;'>2. How to Make Our Ideas Clear      32</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-3' style='color:#FFFF;'>3. The Doctrine of Chances      61</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-4' style='color:#FFFF;'>4. The Probability of Induction      82</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-5' style='color:#FFFF;'>5. The Order of Nature      106</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap1-6' style='color:#FFFF;'>6. Deduction, Induction and Hypothesis      131</a></p>
 
<p class='c006'><a href='#part2' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Part II. Love and Chance</span></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-1' style='color:#FFFF;'>1. The Architecture of Theories      157</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-2' style='color:#FFFF;'>2. The Doctrine of Necessity Examined      179</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-3' style='color:#FFFF;'>3. The Law of Mind      202</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-4' style='color:#FFFF;'>4. Man’s Glassy Essence      238</a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><a href='#chap2-5' style='color:#FFFF;'>5. Evolutionary Love      267</a></p>
 
<p class='c006'><a href='#essay' style='color:#FFFF;'><span class='sc'>Supplementary Essay</span>—The Pragmatism of Peirce, by John Dewey      301</a></p>
 
<div class='chapter'>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>
 
  <h2 id='intro' class='c009'>INTRODUCTION</h2>
 
</div>
 
<p class='c006'>Many and diverse are the minds that form the philosophic
 
community. There are, first and foremost, the great
 
masters, the system builders who rear their stately palaces
 
towering to the moon. These architectonic minds are
 
served by a varied host of followers and auxiliaries. Some
 
provide the furnishings to make these mystic mansions of
 
the mind more commodious, while others are engaged in
 
making their façades more imposing. Some are busy
 
strengthening weak places or building much-needed additions,
 
while many more are engaged in defending these
 
structures against the impetuous army of critics who are
 
ever eager and ready to pounce down upon and destroy all
 
that is new or bears the mortal mark of human imperfection.
 
There are also the philologists, those who are in a
 
more narrow sense scholars, who dig not only for facts or
 
roots, but also for the stones which may serve either for
 
building or as weapons of destruction. Remote from all
 
these, however, are the intellectual rovers who, in their
 
search for new fields, venture into the thick jungle that
 
surrounds the little patch of cultivated science. They are
 
not gregarious creatures, these lonely pioneers; and in their
 
wanderings they often completely lose touch with those
 
who tread the beaten paths. Those that return to the community
 
often speak strangely of strange things; and it is
 
not always that they arouse sufficient faith for others to
 
follow them and change their trails into high roads.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_viii'>viii</span>Few nowadays question the great value of these pioneer
 
minds; and it is often claimed that universities are established
 
to facilitate their work, and to prevent it from being
 
lost. But universities, like other well-managed institutions,
 
can find place only for those who work well in harness.
 
The restless, impatient minds, like the socially or conventionally
 
unacceptable, are thus kept out, no matter how
 
fruitful their originality. Charles S. Peirce was certainly
 
one of these restless pioneer souls with the fatal gift of
 
genuine originality. In his early papers, in the <i>Journal of
 
Speculative Philosophy</i>, and later, in the <i>Monist</i> papers
 
reprinted as <a href='#part2'>Part II</a> of this volume, we get glimpses of a
 
vast philosophic system on which he was working with an
 
unusual wealth of material and apparatus. To a rich
 
imagination and extraordinary learning he added one of the
 
most essential gifts of successful system builders, the power
 
to coin an apt and striking terminology. But the admitted
 
incompleteness of these preliminary sketches of his philosophic
 
system is not altogether due to the inherent difficulty
 
of the task and to external causes such as neglect and
 
poverty. A certain inner instability or lack of self-mastery
 
is reflected in the outer moral or conventional waywardness
 
which, except for a few years at Johns Hopkins,
 
caused him to be excluded from a university career, and
 
thus deprived him of much needed stimulus to ordinary
 
consistency and intelligibility. As the years advanced,
 
bringing little general interest in, or recognition of, the brilliant
 
logical studies of his early years, Peirce became more
 
and more fragmentary, cryptic, and involved; so that
 
James, the intellectual companion of his youth, later found
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>his lectures on pragmatism, “flashes of brilliant light relieved
 
against Cimmerian darkness”—a statement not to
 
be entirely discounted by the fact that James had no interest
 
in or aptitude for formal logical or mathematical considerations.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Despite these limitations, however, Peirce stands out as
 
one of the great founders of modern scientific logic; and in
 
the realm of general philosophy the development of some
 
of his pregnant ideas has led to the pragmatism and
 
radical empiricism of James, as well as to the mathematical
 
idealism of Royce, and to the anti-nominalism which characterizes
 
the philosophic movement known as Neo-Realism.
 
At any rate, the work of James, Royce, and Russell, as
 
well as that of logicians like Schroeder, brings us of the
 
present generation into a better position to appreciate the
 
significance of Peirce’s work, than were his contemporaries.</p>
 
<h3 class='c010'>I</h3>
 
<p class='c006'>Peirce was by antecedents, training, and occupation a
 
scientist. He was a son of Benjamin Peirce, the great
 
Harvard mathematician, and his early environment, together
 
with his training in the Lawrence Scientific School,
 
justified his favorite claim that he was brought up in a
 
laboratory. He made important contributions not only in
 
mathematical logic but also in photometric astronomy,
 
geodesy, and psychophysics, as well as in philology. For
 
many years Peirce worked on the problems of geodesy, and
 
his contribution to the subject, his researches on the pendulum,
 
was at once recognized by European investigators
 
in this field. The International Geodetic Congress, to
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>which he was the first American representative, gave unusual
 
attention to his paper, and men like Cellerier and
 
Plantamour acknowledged their obligations to him.<a id='r1' /><a href='#f1' class='c011'><sup>[1]</sup></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>This and other scientific work involving fine measurement,
 
with the correlative investigations into the theory
 
of probable error, seem to have been a decisive influence
 
in the development of Peirce’s philosophy of chance.
 
Philosophers inexperienced in actual scientific measurement
 
may naïvely accept as absolute truth such statements as
 
“every particle of matter attracts every other particle
 
directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the
 
square of the distance,” or “when hydrogen and oxygen
 
combine to form water the ratio of their weights is 1 : 8.”
 
But to those who are actually engaged in measuring natural
 
phenomena with instruments of precision, nature shows no
 
such absolute constancy or simplicity. As every laboratory
 
worker knows, no two observers, and no one observer in
 
successive experiments, get absolutely identical results. To
 
the men of the heroic period of science this was no difficulty.
 
They held unquestioningly the Platonic faith that nature
 
was created on simple geometric lines, and all the minute
 
variations were attributable to the fault of the observer or
 
the crudity of his instruments. This heroic faith was,
 
and still is, a most powerful stimulus to scientific research
 
and a protection against the incursions of supernaturalism.
 
But few would defend it to-day in its explicit form, and
 
there is little empirical evidence to show that while the
 
observer and his instruments are always varying, the objects
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>which he measures never deviate in the slightest from
 
the simple law. Doubtless, as one becomes more expert in
 
the manipulation of physical instruments, there is a noticeable
 
diminution of the range of the personal “error,” but
 
no amount of skill and no refinement of our instruments
 
have ever succeeded in eliminating irregular, though
 
small, variations. “Try to verify any law of nature and
 
you will find that the more precise your observations, the
 
more certain they will be to show irregular departure from
 
the law.”<a id='r2' /><a href='#f2' class='c011'><sup>[2]</sup></a> There is certainly nothing in our empirical information
 
to prevent us from saying that all the so-called
 
constants of nature are merely instances of variation between
 
limits so near each other that their differences
 
may be neglected for certain purposes. Moreover, the approach
 
to constancy is observed only in mass phenomena,
 
when we are dealing with very large numbers of particles;
 
but social statistics also approach constant ratios when
 
the numbers are very large. Hence, without denying discrepancies
 
due solely to errors of observation, Peirce contends
 
that “we must suppose far more minute discrepancies
 
to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself,
 
to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite
 
formula.”<a id='r3' /><a href='#f3' class='c011'><sup>[3]</sup></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>It is usual to associate disbelief in absolute laws of nature
 
with sentimental claims for freedom or theological
 
miracles. It is, therefore, well to insist that Peirce’s attack
 
is entirely in the interests of exact logic and a rational
 
account of the physical universe. As a rigorous logician
 
familiar with the actual procedures by which our knowledge
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xii'>xii</span>of the various laws of nature is obtained, he could not
 
admit that experience could prove their claim to absoluteness.
 
All the physical laws actually known, like Boyle’s
 
law or the law of gravitation, involve excessive simplification
 
of the phenomenal course of events, and thus a large
 
element of empirical inaccuracy. But a more positive
 
objection against the traditional assumption of absolute or
 
invariable laws of nature, is the fact that such assumption
 
makes the regularities of the universe ultimate, and thus
 
cuts us off from the possibility of ever explaining them or
 
how there comes to be as much regularity in the universe
 
as there is. But in ordinary affairs, the occurrence of any
 
regularity is the very thing to be explained. Moreover,
 
modern statistical mechanics and thermodynamics (theory
 
of gases, entropy, etc.) suggest that the regularity in the
 
universe is a matter of gradual growth; that the whole of
 
physical nature is a growth from a chaos of diversity to a
 
maximum of uniformity or entropy. A leading physicist of
 
the 19th Century, Boltzmann, has suggested that the
 
process of the whole physical universe is like that of a
 
continuous shaking up of a hap-hazard or chance mixture
 
of things, which thus gradually results in a progressively
 
more uniform distribution. Since Duns Scotus, students
 
of logic have known that every real entity has its individual
 
character (its <i>haecceitas</i> or <i>thisness</i>) which cannot be explained
 
or deduced from that which is uniform. Every
 
explanation, for example, of the moon’s path must take
 
particular existences for granted. Such original or underived
 
individuality and diversity is precisely what Peirce
 
means by chance; and from this point of view chance is
 
prior to law.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>All that is necessary to visualize this is to suppose that
 
there is an infinitesimal tendency in things to acquire
 
habits, a tendency which is itself an accidental variation
 
grown habitual. We shall then be on the road to explain
 
the evolution and existence of the limited uniformities
 
actually prevailing in the physical world.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>A good deal of the foregoing may sound somewhat
 
mythologic. But even if it were so it would have the merit
 
of offering a rational alternative to the mechanical mythology
 
according to which all the atoms in the universe are
 
to-day precisely in the same condition in which they were
 
on the day of creation, a mythology which is forced to
 
regard all the empirical facts of spontaneity and novelty
 
as illusory, or devoid of substantial truth.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>The doctrine of the primacy of chance naturally suggests
 
the primacy of mind. Just as law is a chance habit so is
 
matter inert mind. The principal law of mind is that ideas
 
literally spread themselves continuously and become more
 
and more general or inclusive, so that people who form
 
communities of any sort develop general ideas in common.
 
When this continuous reaching-out of feeling becomes nurturing
 
love, such, e.g., which parents have for their offspring
 
or thinkers for their ideas, we have creative
 
evolution.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>James and Royce have called attention to the similarity
 
between Peirce’s doctrine of tychistic-agapism (chance and
 
love) and the creative evolution of Bergson. But while
 
both philosophies aim to restore life and growth in their
 
account of the nature of things, Peirce’s approach seems to
 
me to have marked advantages, owing to its being in closer
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xiv'>xiv</span>touch with modern physics. Bergson’s procedure is largely
 
based on the contention that mechanics cannot explain
 
certain empirical facts, such as the supposed identity of
 
the vertebrate eye and the eye of the scallop. But the fact
 
here is merely one of a certain resemblance of pattern, which
 
may well be explained by the mechanical principles of convergent
 
evolution. Peirce’s account involves no rejection
 
of the possibility of mechanical explanations. Indeed, by
 
carrying chance into the laws of mechanics he is enabled to
 
elaborate a positive and highly suggestive theory of protoplasm
 
to explain the facts of plasticity and habit.<a id='r4' /><a href='#f4' class='c011'><sup>[4]</sup></a> Instead
 
of postulating with Spencer and Bergson a continuous
 
growth of diversity, Peirce allows for growth of habits both
 
in diversity and in uniformity. The Spencerian mechanical
 
philosophy reduces all diversity to mere spatial differences.
 
There can be no substantial novelty; only new forms or
 
combinations can arise in time. The creative evolution of
 
Bergson though intended to support the claims of spontaneity
 
is still like the Spencerian in assuming all evolution
 
as proceeding from the simple to the complex. Peirce
 
allows for diversity and specificity as part of the original
 
character or endowment of things, which in the course of
 
time may increase in some respects and diminish in others.
 
Mind acquires the habit both of taking on, and also of laying
 
aside, habits. Evolution may thus lead to homogeneity
 
or uniformity as well as to greater heterogeneity.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Not only has Peirce a greater regard than even Bergson
 
for the actual diversity and spontaneity of things, but he
 
is in a much better position than any other modern philosopher
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xv'>xv</span>to explain the order and coherence of the world.
 
This he effects by uniting the medieval regard for the
 
reality of universals with the modern scientific use of the
 
concept of continuity. The unfortunate war between the
 
pioneers of modern science and the adherents of the scholastic
 
doctrine of substantial forms, has been one of the
 
great misfortunes of human thought, in that it made absolute
 
atomism and nominalism the professed <i>creed</i> of physical
 
science. Now, extreme nominalism, the insistence on
 
the reality of the particular, leaves no room for the genuine
 
reality of law. It leaves, as Hume had the courage to
 
admit, nothing whereby the present can determine the
 
future; so that anything is as likely to happen as not.
 
From such a chaotic world, the <i>procedure</i> of modern natural
 
and mathematical science has saved us by the persistent
 
use of the principle of continuity; and no one has indicated
 
this more clearly than Peirce who was uniquely qualified
 
to do so by being a close student both of Duns Scotus and
 
of modern scientific methods.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>It is instructive in this respect to contrast the views of
 
Peirce and James. James, who so generously indicated his
 
indebtedness to Peirce for his pragmatism, was also largely
 
indebted to Peirce for his doctrine of radical empiricism.<a id='r5' /><a href='#f5' class='c011'><sup>[5]</sup></a>
 
The latter doctrine seeks to rescue the continuity and
 
fluidity of experience from the traditional British empiricism
 
or nominalism, which had resolved everything into a
 
number of mutually exclusive mental states. It is curious,
 
however, that while in his psychology James made extensive
 
use of the principle of continuity, he could not free himself
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xvi'>xvi</span>from British nominalism in his philosophy—witness the
 
extreme individualism of his social philosophy or the equally
 
extreme anthropomorphism of his religion. Certain of
 
Peirce’s suggestions as to the use of continuity in social
 
philosophy have been developed by Royce in his theory of
 
social consciousness and the nature of the community;<a id='r6' /><a href='#f6' class='c011'><sup>[6]</sup></a>
 
but much remains to be worked out and we can but repeat
 
Peirce’s own hope: “May some future student go over
 
this ground again and have the leisure to give his results
 
to the world.”</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>It is well to note, however, that after writing the papers
 
included in this volume Peirce continued to be occupied
 
with the issues here raised. This he most significantly
 
indicated in the articles on logical topics contributed to
 
Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy.<a id='r7' /><a href='#f7' class='c011'><sup>[7]</sup></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>In these articles it is naturally the logical bearing of the
 
principles of tychism (chance), synechism (continuity), and
 
agapism (love) that is stressed. To use the Kantian terminology,
 
almost native to Peirce, the regulative rather
 
than the constitutive aspect of these principles is emphasized.
 
Thus the doctrine of chance is not only what it was
 
for James’ radical empiricism, a release from the blind
 
necessity of a “block universe,” but also a method of keeping
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xvii'>xvii</span>open a possible explanation of the genesis of the laws
 
of nature and an interpretation of them in accordance with
 
the theorems of probability, so fruitful in physical science
 
as well as in practical life. So the doctrine of love is not
 
only a cosmologic one, showing how chance feeling generates
 
order or rational diversity through the habit of generality
 
or continuity, but it also gives us the meaning of truth in
 
social terms, in showing that the test as to whether any
 
proposition is true postulates an indefinite number of co-operating
 
investigators. On its logical side the doctrine of
 
love (agapism) also recognized the important fact that
 
general ideas have a certain attraction which makes us divine
 
their nature even though we cannot clearly determine their
 
precise meaning before developing their possible consequences.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Of the doctrine of continuity we are told expressly<a id='r8' /><a href='#f8' class='c011'><sup>[8]</sup></a> that
 
“synechism is not an ultimate absolute metaphysical
 
doctrine. It is a regulative principle of logic,” seeking the
 
thread of identity in diverse cases and avoiding hypotheses
 
that this or that is ultimate and, therefore, inexplicable.
 
(Examples of such hypotheses are: the existence of absolutely
 
accurate or uniform laws of nature, the eternity and
 
absolute likeness of all atoms, etc.) To be sure, the
 
synechist cannot deny that there is an element of the inexplicable
 
or ultimate, since it is directly forced upon him.
 
But he cannot regard it as a source of explanation. The
 
assumption of an inexplicability is a barrier on the road to
 
science. “The form under which alone anything can be
 
understood is the form of generality which is the same thing
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xviii'>xviii</span>as continuity.”<a id='r9' /><a href='#f9' class='c011'><sup>[9]</sup></a> This insistence on the generality of
 
intelligible form is perfectly consistent with due emphases
 
on the reality of the individual, which to a Scotist realist
 
connotes an element of will or will-resistence, but in logical
 
procedure means that the test of the truth or falsity of any
 
proposition refers us to particular perceptions.<a id='r10' /><a href='#f10' class='c011'><sup>[10]</sup></a> But
 
as no multitude of individuals can exhaust the meaning of
 
a continuum, which includes also organizing relations of
 
order, the full meaning of a concept cannot be in any
 
individual reaction, but is rather to be sought in the manner
 
in which all such reactions contribute to the development of
 
the concrete reasonableness of the whole evolutionary
 
process. In scientific procedure this means that integrity
 
of belief in general is more important than, because it is
 
the condition of, particular true beliefs.</p>
 
<h3 class='c010'>II</h3>
 
<p class='c006'>This insistence on the continuity so effectually used as a
 
heuristic principle in natural and mathematical science,
 
distinguishes the pragmatism of Peirce from that of his
 
follower James. Prof. Dewey has developed this point
 
authoritatively in the supplementary essay; but in view of
 
the general ignorance as to the sources of pragmatism which
 
prevails in this incurious age, some remarks on the actual
 
historical origin of pragmatism may be in order.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>There can be little doubt that Peirce was led to the formulation
 
of the principle of pragmatism through the influence
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xix'>xix</span>of Chauncey Wright.<a id='r11' /><a href='#f11' class='c011'><sup>[11]</sup></a> Wright who had first hand acquaintance
 
with creative scientific work in mathematics,
 
physics, and botany was led by the study of Mill and Bain
 
to reflect on the characteristics of scientific method. This
 
reflection led him to draw a distinction between the use of
 
popular scientific material, by men like Spencer, to construct
 
a myth or picture of the world, and the scientific
 
use of laws by men like Newton as means for extending our
 
knowledge of phenomena. Gravitation as a general fact
 
had interested metaphysicians long before Newton. What
 
made Newton’s contribution scientific was the formulation
 
of a mathematical law which has enabled us to deduce all
 
the then known facts of the solar system and to anticipate
 
or predict many more facts the existence of which would
 
not otherwise be even suspected, e.g., the existence of the
 
planet Neptune. Wright insists, therefore, that the principles
 
of modern mathematical and physical science are
 
the means through which nature is discovered, that scientific
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xx'>xx</span>laws are the finders rather than merely the summaries of
 
factual truths. This conception of the experimental scientist
 
as translating general propositions into prescriptions
 
for attaining new experimental truths, is the starting point
 
of Peirce’s pragmatism. The latter is embodied in the
 
principle that the meaning of a concept is to be found in
 
“all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the
 
affirmation or denial of the concept could imply.”<a id='r12' /><a href='#f12' class='c011'><sup>[12]</sup></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>In the earlier statement of the pragmatic maxim,<a id='r13' /><a href='#f13' class='c011'><sup>[13]</sup></a>
 
Peirce emphasized the consequences for conduct that follow
 
from the acceptance or rejection of an idea; but the stoical
 
maxim that the end of man is action did not appeal to him
 
as much at sixty as it did at thirty.<a id='r14' /><a href='#f14' class='c011'><sup>[14]</sup></a> Naturally also Peirce
 
could not follow the development of pragmatism by Wm.
 
James who, like almost all modern psychologists, was a
 
thorough nominalist and always emphasized particular
 
sensible experience.<a id='r15' /><a href='#f15' class='c011'><sup>[15]</sup></a> It seemed to Peirce that such emphasis
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxi'>xxi</span>on particular experiences endangered the principle
 
of continuity which in the hands of men like Weierstrass
 
had reformed modern mathematics. For this reason he
 
began to call his own doctrine pragmaticism, a sufficiently
 
unattractive name, he thought, to save it from kidnappers
 
and from popularity. He never, however, abandoned the
 
principle of pragmatism, that the meaning of an idea is
 
clarified (because constituted) by its conceivable experimental
 
consequences. Indeed, if we want to clarify the
 
meaning of the idea of pragmatism, let us apply the pragmatic
 
test to it. What will be the effect of accepting it?
 
Obviously it will be to develop certain general ideas or
 
habits of looking at things.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Peirce’s pragmatism has, therefore, a decidedly intellectual
 
cast. The meaning of an idea or proposition is
 
found not by an intuition of it but by working out its implications.
 
It admits that thought does not constitute
 
reality. Categories can have no concrete being without
 
action or immediate feeling. But thought is none the less
 
an essential ingredient of reality; thought is “the melody
 
running through the succession of our sensations.” Pragmatism,
 
according to Peirce, seeks to define the rational
 
purport, not the sensuous quality. It is interested not in
 
the effect of our practical occupations or desires on our
 
ideas, but in the function of ideas as guides of action.
 
Whether a man is to pay damages in a certain lawsuit may
 
depend, in fact, on a term in the Aristotelian logic such as
 
proximate cause.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>It is of interest to observe that though Peirce is an ardent
 
admirer of Darwin’s method, his scientific caution makes
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxii'>xxii</span>him refuse to apply the analogy of biologic natural selection
 
to the realm of ideas, in the wholesale and uncritical
 
manner that has lately become fashionable. Natural selection
 
may well favor the triumph of views which directly
 
influence biologic survival. But the pleasure of entertaining
 
congenial illusions may overbalance the inconvenience
 
resulting from their deceptive character. Thus rhetorical
 
appeals may long prevail over scientific evidence.</p>
 
<h3 class='c010'>III</h3>
 
<p class='c006'>Peirce preferred to call himself a logician, and his contributions
 
to logic have so far proved his most generally
 
recognized achievement. For a right perspective of these
 
contributions we may well begin with the observation that
 
though few branches of philosophy have been cultivated as
 
continuously as logic, Kant was able to affirm that the
 
science of logic had made no substantial progress since the
 
time of Aristotle. The reason for this is that Aristotle’s
 
logic, the logic of classes, was based on his own scientific
 
procedure as a zoologist, and is still in essence a valid
 
method so far as classification is part of all rational procedure.
 
But when we come to describe the mathematical
 
method of physical science, we cannot cast it into the
 
Aristotelian form without involving ourselves in such complicated
 
artificialities as to reduce almost to nil the value
 
of Aristotle’s logic as an organon. Aristotle’s logic enables
 
us to make a single inference from two premises. But the
 
vast multitude of theorems that modern mathematics has
 
derived from a few premises as to the nature of number,
 
shows the need of formulating a logic or theory of inference
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxiii'>xxiii</span>that shall correspond to the modern, more complicated, practice
 
as Aristotle’s logic did to simple classificatory zoology.
 
To do this effectively would require the highest constructive
 
logical genius, together with an intimate knowledge
 
of the methods of the great variety of modern sciences.
 
This is in the nature of the case a very rare combination,
 
since great investigators are not as critical in examining
 
their own procedure as they are in examining the subject
 
matter which is their primary scientific interest. Hence,
 
when great investigators like Poincaré come to describe
 
their own work, they fall back on the uncritical assumptions
 
of the traditional logic which they learned in their school
 
days. Moreover, “For the last three centuries thought
 
has been conducted in laboratories, in the field, or otherwise
 
in the face of the facts, while chairs of logic have been
 
filled by men who breathe the air of the seminary.”<a id='r16' /><a href='#f16' class='c011'><sup>[16]</sup></a> The
 
great Leibnitz had the qualifications, but here, as elsewhere,
 
his worldly occupations left him no opportunity
 
except for very fragmentary contributions. It was not until
 
the middle of the 19th century that two mathematicians,
 
Boole and DeMorgan, laid the foundations for a more generalized
 
logic. Boole developed a general logical algorithm
 
or calculus, while DeMorgan called attention to non-syllogistic
 
inference and especially to the importance of the logic of
 
relations. Peirce’s great achievement is to have recognized
 
the possibilities of both and to have generalized and developed
 
them into a general theory of scientific inference.
 
The extent and thoroughness of his achievement has been
 
obscured by his fragmentary way of writing and by a rather
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxiv'>xxiv</span>unwieldy symbolism. Still, modern mathematical logic,
 
such as that of Russell’s <i>Principles of Mathematics</i>, is but a
 
development of Peirce’s logic of relatives.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>This phase of Peirce’s work is highly technical and an
 
account of it is out of place here. Such an account will
 
be found in Lewis’ <i>Survey of Symbolic Logic</i>.<a id='r17' /><a href='#f17' class='c011'><sup>[17]</sup></a> I refer to
 
it here only to remind the reader that the <i>Illustrations of
 
the Logic of the Sciences</i> (<a href='#part1'>Part I</a> of this volume) have a
 
background of patient detailed work which is still being
 
developed to-day.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Symbolic logic has been held in rather low esteem by
 
the followers of the old classical methods in philosophy.
 
Their stated objection to it has been mainly that it is
 
concerned with the minutiae of an artificial language and is
 
of no value as a guide to the interpretation of reality.
 
Now it should be readily admitted that preoccupation with
 
symbolic logic is rather apt to retard the irresponsible
 
flight of philosophic fancy. Yet this is by no means always
 
an evil. By insisting on an accuracy that is painful to those
 
impatient to obtain sweeping and comforting, though hasty,
 
conclusions, symbolic logic is well calculated to remove the
 
great scandal of traditional philosophy—the claim of absolutely
 
certain results in fields where there is the greatest
 
conflict of opinion. This scandalous situation arises in part
 
from the fact that in popular exposition we do not have to
 
make our premises or assumptions explicit; hence all sorts
 
of dubious prejudices are implicitly appealed to as absolutely
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxv'>xxv</span>necessary principles. Also, by the use of popular
 
terms which have a variety of meanings, one easily slides
 
from one meaning to another, so that the most improbable
 
conclusions are thus derived from seeming truisms. By
 
making assumptions and rules explicit, and by using technical
 
terms that do not drag wide penumbras of meaning
 
with them, the method of symbolic logic may cruelly reduce
 
the sweeping pretensions of philosophy. But there is no
 
reason for supposing that pretentiousness rather than
 
humility is the way to philosophic salvation. Man is bound
 
to speculate about the universe beyond the range of his
 
knowledge, but he is not bound to indulge the vanity of
 
setting up such speculations as absolutely certain dogmas.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>There is, however, no reason for denying that greater
 
rigor and accuracy of exposition can really help us to discern
 
new truth. Modern mathematics since Gauss and
 
Weierstrass has actually been led to greater fruitfulness by
 
increased rigor which makes such procedure as the old
 
proofs of Taylor’s theorem no longer possible. The substitution
 
of rigorous analytic procedures for the old Euclidean
 
proofs based on intuition, has opened up vast fields
 
of geometry. Nor has this been without any effect on
 
philosophy. Where formerly concepts like infinity and continuity
 
were objects of gaping awe or the recurrent occasions
 
for intellectual violence,<a id='r18' /><a href='#f18' class='c011'><sup>[18]</sup></a> we are now beginning to
 
use them, thanks to Peirce and Royce, in accurate and
 
definable senses. Consider, for instance, the amount of
 
a priori nonsense which Peirce eliminates by pointing out
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxvi'>xxvi</span>that the application of the concept of continuity to a span
 
of consciousness removes the necessity for assuming a first
 
or last moment; so likewise the range of vision on a large
 
unobstructed ground has no line between the visible and the
 
invisible. These considerations will be found utterly destructive
 
of the force of the old arguments (fundamental
 
to Kant and others) as to the necessary infinity of time and
 
space. Similar enlightenment is soon likely to result from
 
the more careful use of terms like relative and absolute,
 
which are bones of contention in philosophy but Ariadne
 
threads of exploration in theoretical physics, because of
 
the definite symbolism of mathematics. Other important
 
truths made clear by symbolic logic is the hypothetical
 
character of universal propositions and the consequent insight
 
that no particulars can be deduced from universals
 
alone, since no number of hypotheses can without given data
 
establish an existing fact.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>There is, however, an even more positive direction in
 
which symbolic logic serves the interest of philosophy, and
 
that is in throwing light on the nature of symbols and on
 
the relation of meaning. Philosophers have light-heartedly
 
dismissed questions as to the nature of significant signs as
 
‘merely’ (most fatal word!) a matter of language. But
 
Peirce in the paper on Man’s Glassy [Shakespearian for
 
Mirror-Like] Essence, endeavors to exhibit man’s whole
 
nature as symbolic.<a id='r19' /><a href='#f19' class='c011'><sup>[19]</sup></a> This is closely connected with his
 
logical doctrine which regards signs or symbols as one of
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxvii'>xxvii</span>the fundamental categories or aspects of the universe
 
(Thoughts and things are the other two). Independently
 
of Peirce but in line with his thought another great and
 
neglected thinker, Santayana, has shown that the whole life
 
of man that is bound up with the institutions of civilization,
 
is concerned with symbols.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>It is not altogether accidental that, since Boole and
 
DeMorgan, those who have occupied themselves with symbolic
 
logic have felt called upon to deal with the problem
 
of probability. The reason is indicated by Peirce when he
 
formulates the problem of probable inference in such a way
 
as to make the old classic logic of absolutely true or false
 
conclusions, a limiting case (i.e., of values 1 and 0) of the
 
logic of probable inference whose values range all the way
 
between these two limits. This technical device is itself
 
the result of applying the principle of continuity to throw
 
two hitherto distinct types of reasoning into the same class.
 
The result is philosophically significant.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Where the classical logic spoke of major and minor
 
premises without establishing any really important difference
 
between the two, Peirce draws a distinction between
 
the premises and the guiding principle of our argument.
 
All reasoning is from some concrete situation to another.
 
The propositions which represent the first are the premises
 
in the strict sense of the word. But the feeling that certain
 
conclusions follow from these premises is conditioned by an
 
implicit or explicit belief in some guiding principle which
 
connects the premises and the conclusions. When such a
 
leading principle results in true conclusions in all cases of
 
true premises, we have logical deduction of the orthodox
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxviii'>xxviii</span>type. If, however, such a principle brings about a true conclusion
 
only in a certain proportion of cases, then we have
 
probability.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>This reduction of probability to the relative frequency
 
of true propositions in a class of propositions, was suggested
 
to Peirce by Venn’s <i>Logic of Chance</i>. Peirce uses it to
 
establish some truths of greatest importance to logic and
 
philosophy.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>He eliminates the difficulties of the old conceptualist
 
view, which made probability a measure of our ignorance
 
and yet had to admit that almost all fruitfulness of our
 
practical and scientific reasoning depended on the theorems
 
of probability. How could we safely predict phenomena by
 
measuring our ignorance?</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Probability being reduced to a matter of the relative frequency
 
of a class in a larger class or genus, it becomes,
 
strictly speaking, inapplicable to single cases by themselves.
 
A single penny will fall head or it will fall tail every time;
 
to-morrow it will rain, or it will not rain at all. The
 
probability of 1/2 or any other fraction means nothing in
 
the single case. It is only because we feel the single event
 
as representative of a class, as something which repeats
 
itself, that we speak elliptically of the probability of a
 
single event. Hence follows the important corollary that
 
reasoning with respect to the probability of this or that arrangement
 
of the universe would be valid only if universes
 
were as plentiful as blackberries.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>To be useful at all, theories must be simpler than the
 
complex facts which they seek to explain. Hence, it is
 
often convenient to employ a principle of certainty where
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxix'>xxix</span>the facts justify only a principle of some degree of probability.
 
In such cases we must be cautious in accepting
 
any extreme consequence of these principles, and also be
 
on guard against apparent refutations based on such extreme
 
consequences.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Finally I should like to emphasize the value of Peirce’s
 
theory of inference for a philosophy of civilization. To the
 
old argument that logic is of no importance because people
 
learn to reason, as to walk, by instinct and habit and not by
 
scientific instruction, Peirce admits<a id='r20' /><a href='#f20' class='c011'><sup>[20]</sup></a> that “all human
 
knowledge up to the highest flights of science is but the
 
development of our inborn animal instincts.” But though
 
logical rules are first felt implicitly, bringing them into
 
explicit consciousness helps the process of analysis and
 
thus makes possible the recognition of old principles in novel
 
situations. This increases our range of adaptability to such
 
an extent as to justify a general distinction between the
 
slave of routine or habit and the freeman who can anticipate
 
and control nature through knowledge of principles. Peirce’s
 
analysis of the method of science as a method of attaining
 
stability of beliefs by free inquiry inviting all possible
 
doubt, in contrast with the methods of iteration (“will to
 
believe”) and social authority, is one of the best introductions
 
to a theory of liberal or Hellenic civilization, as
 
opposed to those of despotic societies. Authority has its
 
roots in the force of habit, but it cannot prevent new and
 
unorthodox ideas from arising; and in the effort to defend
 
authoritative social views men are apt to be far more ruthless
 
than in defending their own personal convictions.</p>
 
<div>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xxx'>xxx</span>
 
  <h3 class='c010'>IV</h3>
 
</div>
 
<p class='c006'>Not only the pragmatism and the radical empiricism of
 
James, but the idealism of Royce and the more recent
 
movement of neo-realism are largely indebted to Peirce.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>It may seem strange that the same thinker should be
 
claimed as foster-father of both recent idealism and realism,
 
and some may take it as another sign of his lack of consistency.
 
But this seeming strangeness is really due to
 
the looseness with which the antithesis between realism and
 
idealism has generally been put. If by idealism we denote
 
the nominalistic doctrine of Berkeley, then Peirce is clearly
 
not an idealist; and his work in logic as a study of types
 
of order (in which Royce followed him) is fundamental
 
for a logical realism. But if idealism means the old
 
Platonic doctrine that “ideas,” genera, or forms are not
 
merely mental but the real conditions of existence, we need
 
not wonder that Peirce was both idealist and realist.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Royce’s indebtedness to Peirce is principally in the use
 
of modern mathematical material, such as the recent development
 
of the concepts of infinity and continuity, to
 
throw light on fundamental questions of philosophy, such
 
as relation of the individual to God or the Universe. At
 
the end of the nineteenth century mathematics had almost
 
disappeared from the repertory of philosophy (cf. Külpe’s
 
<i>Introduction to Philosophy</i>), and Peirce’s essay on the
 
<i>Law of Mind</i> opened a new way which Royce followed in
 
his <i>World and the Individual</i>, to the great surprise of his
 
idealistic brethren. In his <i>Problem of Christianity</i> Royce
 
has also indicated his indebtedness to Peirce for his doctrine
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxi'>xxxi</span>of social consciousness, the mind of the community,
 
and the process of interpretation. It may be that a great
 
deal of the similarity between the thoughts of these two
 
men is due to common sources, such as the works of Kant
 
and Schelling; but it is well to note that not only in his
 
later writings but also in his lectures and seminars Royce
 
continually referred to Peirce’s views.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>The ground for the neo-realist movement in American
 
philosophy was largely prepared by the mathematical work
 
of Russell and by the utilization of mathematics to which
 
Royce was led by Peirce. The logic of Mr. Russell is
 
based, as he himself has pointed out, on a combination of
 
the work of Peirce and Peano. In this combination the
 
notation of Peano has proved of greater technical fluency,
 
but all of Peano’s results can also be obtained by Peirce’s
 
method as developed by Schroeder and Mrs. Ladd-Franklin.
 
But philosophically Peirce’s influence is far greater in
 
insisting that logic is not a branch of psychology, that it
 
is not concerned with merely mental processes, but with
 
objective relations. To the view that the laws of logic
 
represent “the necessities of thought,” that propositions
 
are true because “we can not help thinking so,” he answers:
 
“Exact logic will say that <i>C</i>’s following logically from <i>A</i> is
 
a state of things which no impotence of thought alone can
 
bring about.”<a id='r21' /><a href='#f21' class='c011'><sup>[21]</sup></a> “The question of validity is purely one
 
of fact and not of thinking.... It is not in the least the
 
question whether, when the premises are accepted by the
 
mind, we feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also.
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxii'>xxxii</span>The true conclusion would remain true if we had no impulse
 
to accept it, and the false one would remain false
 
though we could not resist the tendency to believe in it.”<a id='r22' /><a href='#f22' class='c011'><sup>[22]</sup></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Since the days of Locke modern philosophy has been
 
almost entirely dominated by the assumption that one must
 
study the process of knowing before one can find out the
 
nature of things known; in other words, that psychology is
 
<i>the</i> central philosophic science. The result of this has been
 
an almost complete identification of philosophy with mental
 
science. Nor did the influence of biologic studies of the
 
middle of the nineteenth century shake the belief in that
 
banal dictum of philosophic mediocrity: “The proper
 
study of mankind is man.” The recent renaissance of
 
logical studies, and the remarkable progress of physics in
 
our own day bid fair to remind us that while the Lockian
 
way has brought some gains to philosophy, the more ancient
 
way of philosophy is by no means exhausted of promise.
 
Man cannot lose his interest in the great cosmic play.
 
Those who have faith in the ancient and fruitful approach
 
to philosophy through the doors of mathematics and physics
 
will find the writings of Charles S. Peirce full of suggestions.
 
That such an approach can also throw light on the
 
vexed problem of knowledge needs no assurance to those
 
acquainted with Plato and Aristotle. But I may conclude
 
by referring to Peirce’s doctrine of ideal as opposed to
 
sensible experiment,<a id='r23' /><a href='#f23' class='c011'><sup>[23]</sup></a> and to his treatment of the question
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_xxxiii'>xxxiii</span>how it is that in spite of an infinity of possible hypotheses,
 
mankind has managed to make so many successful inductions.<a id='r24' /><a href='#f24' class='c011'><sup>[24]</sup></a>
 
And for the bearing of mathematical studies on the
 
wisdom of life, the following is certainly worth serious reflection:
 
“All human affairs rest upon probabilities. If
 
man were immortal [on earth] he could be perfectly sure
 
of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted
 
should betray his trust. He would break down, at last, as
 
every great fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization
 
does. In place of this we have death.” The recognition
 
that the death of the individual does not destroy the logical
 
meaning of his utterances, that this meaning involves the
 
ideal of an unlimited community, carries us into the heart
 
of pure religion.</p>
 
 
 
<div class='chapter'>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
 
  <h2 id='proem' class='c009'>PROEM <br /> THE RULES OF PHILOSOPHY<a id='r25' /><a href='#f25' class='c011'><sup>[25]</sup></a></h2>
 
</div>
 
<p class='c006'>Descartes is the father of modern philosophy, and the
 
spirit of Cartesianism—that which principally distinguishes
 
it from the scholasticism which it displaced—may
 
be compendiously stated as follows:</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>1. It teaches that philosophy must begin with universal
 
doubt; whereas scholasticism had never questioned fundamentals.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>2. It teaches that the ultimate test of certainty is to be
 
found in the individual consciousness; whereas scholasticism
 
had rested on the testimony of sages and of the Catholic
 
Church.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>3. The multiform argumentation of the middle ages is
 
replaced by a single thread of inference depending often
 
upon inconspicuous premises.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>4. Scholasticism had its mysteries of faith, but undertook
 
to explain all created things. But there are many facts
 
which Cartesianism not only does not explain but renders
 
absolutely inexplicable, unless to say that “God makes them
 
so” is to be regarded as an explanation.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>In some, or all of these respects, most modern philosophers
 
have been, in effect, Cartesians. Now without wishing
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>to return to scholasticism, it seems to me that modern
 
science and modern logic require us to stand upon a very
 
different platform from this.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>1. We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin
 
with all the prejudices which we actually have when we
 
enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are
 
not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which
 
it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this
 
initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real
 
doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will
 
ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those
 
beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as
 
useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be
 
in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly
 
upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course
 
of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing;
 
but in that case he doubts because he has a positive
 
reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim.
 
Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not
 
doubt in our hearts.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>2. The same formalism appears in the Cartesian criterion,
 
which amounts to this: “Whatever I am clearly convinced
 
of, is true.” If I were really convinced, I should have done
 
with reasoning and should require no test of certainty.
 
But then to make single individuals absolute judges of truth
 
is most pernicious. The result is that metaphysics has
 
reached a pitch of certainty far beyond that of the physical
 
sciences;—only they can agree upon nothing else. In
 
sciences in which men come to agreement, when a theory
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>has been broached it is considered to be on probation until
 
this agreement is reached. After it is reached, the question
 
of certainty becomes an idle one, because there is no one
 
left who doubts it. We individually cannot reasonably
 
hope to attain the ultimate philosophy which we pursue;
 
we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers.
 
Hence, if disciplined and candid minds carefully
 
examine a theory and refuse to accept it, this ought to create
 
doubts in the mind of the author of the theory himself.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>3. Philosophy ought to imitate the successful sciences in
 
its methods, so far as to proceed only from tangible premises
 
which can be subjected to careful scrutiny, and to trust
 
rather to the multitude and variety of its arguments than
 
to the conclusiveness of any one. Its reasoning should not
 
form a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link,
 
but a cable whose fibers may be ever so slender, provided
 
they are sufficiently numerous and intimately connected.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>4. Every unidealistic philosophy supposes some absolutely
 
inexplicable, unanalyzable ultimate; in short, something
 
resulting from mediation itself not susceptible of mediation.
 
Now that anything is thus inexplicable, can only be known
 
by reasoning from signs. But the only justification of an
 
inference from signs is that the conclusion explains the fact.
 
To suppose the fact absolutely inexplicable, is not to explain
 
it, and hence this supposition is never allowable.</p>
 
 
 
<div class='chapter'>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>
 
  <h2 id='part1' class='c009'>PART I <br /> CHANCE AND LOGIC <br /> (ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LOGIC OF SCIENCE)</h2>
 
</div>
 
<div>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>
 
  <h3 id='chap1-1' class='c001'>CHANCE AND LOGIC <br /> FIRST PAPER <br /> THE FIXATION OF BELIEF<a id='r26' /><a href='#f26' class='c011'><sup>[26]</sup></a></h3>
 
</div>
 
<h4 class='c012'>I</h4>
 
<p class='c006'>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.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>We come to the full possession of our power of drawing
 
inferences the last of all our faculties, for it is not so much
 
a natural gift as a long and difficult art. The history of
 
its practice would make a grand subject for a book. The
 
medieval schoolman, following the Romans, made logic the
 
earliest of a boy’s studies after grammar, as being very
 
easy. So it was as they understood it. Its fundamental
 
principle, according to them, was, that all knowledge rests
 
on either authority or reason; but that whatever is deduced
 
by reason depends ultimately on a premise derived from
 
authority. Accordingly, as soon as a boy was perfect in
 
the syllogistic procedure, his intellectual kit of tools was
 
held to be complete.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle
 
of the thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the
 
schoolmen’s conception of reasoning appeared only an obstacle
 
to truth. He saw that experience alone teaches anything—a
 
proposition which to us seems easy to understand,
 
because a distinct conception of experience has been handed
 
down to us from former generations; which to him also
 
seemed perfectly clear, because its difficulties had not yet
 
unfolded themselves. Of all kinds of experience, the best,
 
he thought, was interior illumination, which teaches many
 
things about Nature which the external senses could never
 
discover, such as the transubstantiation of bread.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Four centuries later, the more celebrated Bacon, in the
 
first book of his “Novum Organum,” gave his clear account
 
of experience as something which must be open to verification
 
and reëxamination. But, superior as Lord Bacon’s
 
conception is to earlier notions, a modern reader who is not
 
in awe of his grandiloquence is chiefly struck by the inadequacy
 
of his view of scientific procedure. That we have
 
only to make some crude experiments, to draw up briefs
 
of the results in certain blank forms, to go through these
 
by rule, checking off everything disproved and setting down
 
the alternatives, and that thus in a few years physical
 
science would be finished up—what an idea! “He wrote
 
on science like a Lord Chancellor,”<a id='r27' /><a href='#f27' class='c011'><sup>[27]</sup></a> indeed.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>The early scientists, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler,
 
Galileo and Gilbert, had methods more like those of their
 
modern brethren. Kepler undertook to draw a curve
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>through the places of Mars;<a id='r28' /><a href='#f28' class='c011'><sup>[28]</sup></a> and his greatest service to
 
science was in impressing on men’s minds that this was the
 
thing to be done if they wished to improve astronomy;
 
that they were not to content themselves with inquiring
 
whether one system of epicycles was better than another
 
but that they were to sit down by the figures and find out
 
what the curve, in truth, was. He accomplished this by his
 
incomparable energy and courage, blundering along in the
 
most inconceivable way (to us), from one irrational hypothesis
 
to another, until, after trying twenty-two of these,
 
he fell, by the mere exhaustion of his invention, upon the
 
orbit which a mind well furnished with the weapons of
 
modern logic would have tried almost at the outset.<a id='r29' /><a href='#f29' class='c011'><sup>[29]</sup></a></p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>In the same way, every work of science great enough to
 
be remembered for a few generations affords some
 
exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning
 
of the time when it was written; and each chief step in
 
science has been a lesson in logic. It was so when Lavoisier
 
and his contemporaries took up the study of Chemistry.
 
The old chemist’s maxim had been, “Lege, lege, lege,
 
labora, ora, et relege.” Lavoisier’s method was not to read
 
and pray, not to dream that some long and complicated
 
chemical process would have a certain effect, to put it into
 
practice with dull patience, after its inevitable failure to
 
dream that with some modification it would have another
 
result, and to end by publishing the last dream as a fact:
 
his way was to carry his mind into his laboratory, and to
 
make of his alembics and cucurbits instruments of thought,
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>giving a new conception of reasoning as something which
 
was to be done with one’s eyes open, by manipulating real
 
things instead of words and fancies.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>The Darwinian controversy is, in large part, a question
 
of logic. Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical
 
method to biology. The same thing has been done in a
 
widely different branch of science, the theory of gases.
 
Though unable to say what the movement of any particular
 
molecule of gas would be on a certain hypothesis regarding
 
the constitution of this class of bodies, Clausius and Maxwell
 
were yet able, by the application of the doctrine of
 
probabilities, to predict that in the long run such and such
 
a proportion of the molecules would, under given circumstances,
 
acquire such and such velocities; that there would
 
take place, every second, such and such a number of collisions,
 
etc.; and from these propositions they were able to
 
deduce certain properties of gases, especially in regard to
 
their heat-relations. In like manner, Darwin, while unable
 
to say what the operation of variation and natural selection
 
in every individual case will be, demonstrates that in the
 
long run they will adapt animals to their circumstances.
 
Whether or not existing animal forms are due to such action,
 
or what position the theory ought to take, forms the
 
subject of a discussion in which questions of fact and
 
questions of logic are curiously interlaced.</p>
 
<h4 class='c012'>II</h4>
 
<p class='c006'>The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration
 
of what we already know, something else which we do
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>not know. Consequently, reasoning is good if it be such
 
as to give a true conclusion from true premises, and not
 
otherwise. Thus, the question of validity is purely one of
 
fact and not of thinking. A being the premises and B being
 
the conclusion, the question is, whether these facts are
 
really so related that if A is B is. If so, the inference is
 
valid; if not, not. It is not in the least the question
 
whether, when the premises are accepted by the mind, we
 
feel an impulse to accept the conclusion also. It is true
 
that we do generally reason correctly by nature. But that
 
is an accident; the true conclusion would remain true if we
 
had no impulse to accept it; and the false one would remain
 
false, though we could not resist the tendency to believe
 
in it.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>We are, doubtless, in the main logical animals, but we
 
are not perfectly so. Most of us, for example, are naturally
 
more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify.
 
We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any
 
facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the
 
effect of experience is continually to counteract our hopes
 
and aspirations. Yet a lifetime of the application of this
 
corrective does not usually eradicate our sanguine disposition.
 
Where hope is unchecked by any experience, it is
 
likely that our optimism is extravagant. Logicality in regard
 
to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal
 
can possess, and might, therefore, result from the
 
action of natural selection; but outside of these it is probably
 
of more advantage to the animal to have his mind
 
filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently
 
of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>That which determines us, from given premises, to draw
 
one inference rather than another, is some habit of mind,
 
whether it be constitutional or acquired. The habit is good
 
or otherwise, according as it produces true conclusions from
 
true premises or not; and an inference is regarded as valid
 
or not, without reference to the truth or falsity of its conclusion
 
specially, but according as the habit which determines
 
it is such as to produce true conclusions in general
 
or not. The particular habit of mind which governs this
 
or that inference may be formulated in a proposition whose
 
truth depends on the validity of the inferences which the
 
habit determines; and such a formula is called a <i>guiding
 
principle</i> of inference. Suppose, for example, that we observe
 
that a rotating disk of copper quickly comes to rest
 
when placed between the poles of a magnet, and we infer
 
that this will happen with every disk of copper. The guiding
 
principle is, that what is true of one piece of copper is
 
true of another. Such a guiding principle with regard to
 
copper would be much safer than with regard to many other
 
substances—brass, for example.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>A book might be written to signalize all the most important
 
of these guiding principles of reasoning. It would
 
probably be, we must confess, of no service to a person
 
whose thought is directed wholly to practical subjects, and
 
whose activity moves along thoroughly beaten paths. The
 
problems which present themselves to such a mind are
 
matters of routine which he has learned once for all to
 
handle in learning his business. But let a man venture into
 
an unfamiliar field, or where his results are not continually
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>checked by experience, and all history shows that the most
 
masculine intellect will ofttimes lose his orientation and
 
waste his efforts in directions which bring him no nearer to
 
his goal, or even carry him entirely astray. He is like a
 
ship on the open sea, with no one on board who understands
 
the rules of navigation. And in such a case some general
 
study of the guiding principles of reasoning would be sure
 
to be found useful.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>The subject could hardly be treated, however, without
 
being first limited; since almost any fact may serve as a
 
guiding principle. But it so happens that there exists a
 
division among facts, such that in one class are all those
 
which are absolutely essential as guiding principles, while
 
in the other are all those which have any other interest as
 
objects of research. This division is between those which
 
are necessarily taken for granted in asking whether a certain
 
conclusion follows from certain premises, and those
 
which are not implied in that question. A moment’s thought
 
will show that a variety of facts are already assumed when
 
the logical question is first asked. It is implied, for instance,
 
that there are such states of mind as doubt and
 
belief—that a passage from one to the other is possible,
 
the object of thought remaining the same, and that this
 
transition is subject to some rules which all minds are alike
 
bound by. As these are facts which we must already know
 
before we can have any clear conception of reasoning at all,
 
it cannot be supposed to be any longer of much interest to
 
inquire into their truth or falsity. On the other hand, it
 
is easy to believe that those rules of reasoning which are
 
deduced from the very idea of the process are the ones
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>which are the most essential; and, indeed, that so long as it
 
conforms to these it will, at least, not lead to false conclusions
 
from true premises. In point of fact, the importance
 
of what may be deduced from the assumptions involved
 
in the logical question turns out to be greater than might
 
be supposed, and this for reasons which it is difficult to exhibit
 
at the outset. The only one which I shall here mention
 
is, that conceptions which are really products of logical
 
reflections, without being readily seen to be so, mingle with
 
our ordinary thoughts, and are frequently the causes of
 
great confusion. This is the case, for example, with the
 
conception of quality. A quality as such is never an object
 
of observation. We can see that a thing is blue or green,
 
but the quality of being blue and the quality of being green
 
are not things which we see; they are products of logical
 
reflections. The truth is, that common-sense, or thought
 
as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical,
 
is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the
 
epithet <i>metaphysical</i> is commonly applied; and nothing can
 
clear it up but a severe course of logic.</p>
 
<h4 class='c012'>III</h4>
 
<p class='c006'>We generally know when we wish to ask a question and
 
when we wish to pronounce a judgment, for there is a dissimilarity
 
between the sensation of doubting and that of
 
believing.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>But this is not all which distinguishes doubt from belief.
 
There is a practical difference. Our beliefs guide our desires
 
and shape our actions. The Assassins, or followers
 
<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>of the Old Man of the Mountain, used to rush into death at
 
his least command, because they believed that obedience
 
to him would insure everlasting felicity. Had they doubted
 
this, they would not have acted as they did. So it is with
 
every belief, according to its degree. The feeling of believing
 
is a more or less sure indication of there being established
 
in our nature some habit which will determine our
 
actions. Doubt never has such an effect.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Nor must we overlook a third point of difference. Doubt
 
is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle
 
to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the
 
latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish
 
to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else.<a id='r30' /><a href='#f30' class='c011'><sup>[30]</sup></a> On
 
the contrary, we cling tenaciously, not merely to believing,
 
but to believing just what we do believe.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>Thus, both doubt and belief have positive effects upon us,
 
though very different ones. Belief does not make us act at
 
once, but puts us into such a condition that we shall behave
 
in a certain way, when the occasion arises. Doubt has not
 
the least effect of this sort, but stimulates us to action until
 
it is destroyed. This reminds us of the irritation of a nerve
 
and the reflex action produced thereby; while for the analogue
 
of belief, in the nervous system, we must look to what
 
are called nervous associations—for example, to that habit
 
of the nerves in consequence of which the smell of a peach
 
will make the mouth water.</p>
 
<div>
 
  <span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>
 
  <h4 class='c012'>IV</h4>
 
</div>
 
<p class='c006'>The irritation of doubt causes a struggle to attain a state
 
of belief. I shall term this struggle <i>inquiry</i>, though it must
 
be admitted that this is sometimes not a very apt
 
designation.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for
 
the struggle to attain belief. It is certainly best for us
 
that our beliefs should be such as may truly guide our
 
actions so as to satisfy our desires; and this reflection will
 
make us reject any belief which does not seem to have been
 
so formed as to insure this result. But it will only do so
 
by creating a doubt in the place of that belief. With the
 
doubt, therefore, the struggle begins, and with the cessation
 
of doubt it ends. Hence, the sole object of inquiry is the
 
settlement of opinion. We may fancy that this is not
 
enough for us, and that we seek not merely an opinion,
 
but a true opinion. But put this fancy to the test, and it
 
proves groundless; for as soon as a firm belief is reached
 
we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be false or true.
 
And it is clear that nothing out of the sphere of our knowledge
 
can be our object, for nothing which does not affect
 
the mind can be a motive for a mental effort. The most
 
that can be maintained is, that we seek for a belief that we
 
shall <i>think</i> to be true. But we think each one of our beliefs
 
to be true, and, indeed, it is mere tautology to say so.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>That the settlement of opinion is the sole end of inquiry
 
is a very important proposition. It sweeps away, at once,
 
various vague and erroneous conceptions of proof. A few
 
of these may be noticed here.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'><span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>1. Some philosophers have imagined that to start an inquiry
 
it was only necessary to utter or question or set it
 
down on paper, and have even recommended us to begin
 
our studies with questioning everything! But the mere
 
putting of a proposition into the interrogative form does
 
not stimulate the mind to any struggle after belief. There
 
must be a real and living doubt, and without all this discussion
 
is idle.</p>
 
 
 
<p class='c005'>2. It is a very common idea that a demonstration must
 
rest on some ultimate and absolutely indubitable propositions.
 
These, according to one school, are first principles
 
of a general nature; according to another, are first sensations.
 
But, in point of fact, an inquiry, to have that completely
 
satisfactory result called demonstration, has only
 
to start with propositions perfectly free from all actual
 
doubt. If the premises are not in fact doubted at all, they
 
cannot be more satisfactory than they are.</p>
 
  
 
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Version du 6 mai 2022 à 12:40

ma recherche

FURCY - Furcy Madeleine1, né le 7 octobre 1786 sur l'île Bourbon (actuelle île de la Réunion) et mort le 12 mars 1856 à l'île Maurice, est un esclave réunionnais connu pour le procès qu'il intente à son propriétaire pour recouvrer la liberté. Le procès dure de 1817 à 1843, soit quasiment de l'interdiction de la traite (1815) à l'abolition de l'esclavage (1848). -

archive iconographique noire visibilitée devant et derriere l'objectif transmission culturelle symbole Partir des images duquel je viens pour parler de celui dans lequel je vis Partir des images dans lequel je vis pour parler de celui duquel je viens


Ce que j’aimerais mettre en avant à travers ce projet, c’est le travail que la constitution d’une archive iconographique noire peut représentée. Dans sa forme, l’existence ou non de certaines images en plus d’une certaine quantité d’images dématérialisées ou lorsqu’elles existent en physique sont accidentées. Dans le fond, soit la lecture d’une archive noire en combattant l’invisibilisation de moments, scènes de vie et entendre les basses fréquences émises par ses images.

Depuis quelques années, je collectionne des images de diverses provenances. De livres, expositions, internet, films, rencontres sportives,... Lorsque ces images m'aapparaisent, j'ai pris le réflexe de les enregistrer. Depuis peu, de les classer sous forme de tableaux où je recherche le nom de le.la photographe, le lieu où a été prise l'image et son contexte. Certaines cases de ce tableau restent vides et n'attendent qu'à être complétée.

pour la réalisation de cette plateforme, j'ai procédé en utilisant du html, les images sont issues de mes archives personnelles et ne m'appartiennent pas.

les vidéos sur la page d'accueil sont ma production personnelle et celle dans le menu sont extraites d'une playlist YouTube, nommée université libre de... YouTube.

au cours de mon parcours scolaire, elles m'ont servies de point de chutes. Me remplissant d'inspiration et d'informations.


http://www.furcy.link/

ether2print

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<div>
  <h1 class='c001'>Chance, Love, and Logic</h1>
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<div class='chapter'>
  <h2 class='c009'>PREFACE</h2>
</div>
<p class='c006'>In the essays gathered together in this volume we have
the most developed and coherent available account of the
philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, whom James, Royce,
Dewey, and leading thinkers in England, France, Germany
and Italy have placed in the forefront of the great
seminal minds of recent times. Besides their inherent
value as the expression of a highly original and fruitful
mind, unusually well trained and informed in the exact
sciences, these essays are also important as giving us the
sources of a great deal of contemporary American philosophy.
Because of this historical importance no omissions
or changes have been made in the text beyond the correction
of some obvious slips and the recasting of a few expressions
in the interest of intelligibility.</p>

<p class='c005'>In a subject which bristles with suggestions and difficulties
the temptation to add notes of explanation or dissent
is almost insuperable. But as such notes might easily
have doubled the size of this volume I have refrained from
all comment on the text except in a few footnotes (indicated,
as usual, in brackets). The introduction is intended
(and I hope it will) help the reader to concatenate the
various lines of thought contained in these essays. I cannot
pretend to have adequately indicated their significance.
Great minds like those of James and Royce have been
nourished by these writings and I am persuaded that they
<span class='pageno' id='Page_iv'>iv</span>still offer mines of fruitful suggestion. Prof. Dewey’s supplementary
essay indicates their value for the fundamental
question of metaphysics, viz. the nature of reality.</p>

<p class='c005'>Grateful acknowledgment is here made to Mrs. Paul
Carus and to the Open Court Publishing Co. for permission
to reprint the essays of Part II from the <i>Monist</i>. The late
Paul Carus was one of the very few who not only gave
Peirce an opportunity to publish, but publicly recognized
the importance of his writings.</p>

<p class='c005'>I must also acknowledge my obligation to Professor
Dewey for kind permission to reprint his essay on the
Pragmatism of Peirce from the Journal of Philosophy, and
to the editors of that Journal, Professors Woodbridge and
Bush, for permission to reprint some material of my own.
Part V of the Bibliography was compiled by Mr. Irving
Smith.</p>

<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Morris R. Cohen</span></p>

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Base de données

plan base de données "FURCY"