Proposed Publisher’s Preface (1913)

Charles Sanders Peirce’s six papers of Illustrations of the Logic of Science first appeared in the Popular Science Monthly for 1877 and 1878 (vols. 12 and 13). They stand outside his chief contributions to logic—which consist principally of papers on what he called “the logic of relatives”—and are not mentioned by Schröder in his bibliography of Peirce’s logical works.¹ For some, the chief interest of these Illustrations will lie in their heralding the beginnings of Pragmatism. The term “Pragmatism” was “first introduced into philosophy,” says William James,² “by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” in the Popular Science Monthly for January of that year, Mr. Peirce, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, said that, to develop a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance. And the tangible fact at the root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these objects, whether immediately or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that concept has positive significance at all.” However, Peirce’s statement that our beliefs are really rules for action “is,” as Dr. Carus³ has remarked, and as we can see from the second chapter below, “an explanation, not a principle, and the explanation is made so that we may rightly understand the nature of belief. Beliefs are never held at random; they serve a purpose and the purpose of a belief is ultimately to ensure a definite line of conduct. It is not probable that anyone would take exception to this. Professor James, however, goes beyond the original meaning of the term by changing the statement of fact into a principle, and he applies it to his conception of truth.” For a criticism of pragmatism, we may refer to Mr. Bertrand Russell’s Philosophical Essays⁴ and the work of Dr. Carus already cited. But a criticism of pragmatism is rather a criticism of the doctrine held by William James and, under the name of “humanism,” by Dr. F.C.S. Schiller, rather than of that held by C.S. Peirce. And it will surprise many to see that the term “pragmatism” was not used in Peirce’s paper of 1878 which is reprinted in the second chapter below. Yet Peirce5 has himself informed us that in the paper of 1878 he had set in motion the subject although not the word of pragmatism. He had only used this expression in oral conversation until James, who was not acquainted with him when he wrote The Will to Believe of 1897, had appropriated it and put his stamp upon it as a philosophical term.⁶

Peirce’s own logical work is hardly touched upon in these essays, and his enduring work—which ranks next to De Morgan—on the logic of relations is not touched upon at all. And yet anyone who is even slightly acquainted with Peirce’s later logical work will recognize in these essays the very characteristic thought and mode of expressing it of our author. The sixth chapter, in particular, contains much that is purely logical—such as a discussion of syllogisms; but, in the main, it is probability and induction to which these chapters on the logic of science are devoted.

Paul Carus

1913

NOTES

         1. Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik (exakte Logik), Vol. I (Leipzig, 1980), 710–11; Vol. II, Part II (Leipzig, 1905), 603.

         2. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New York, 1907), 46.

         3. Truth on Trial (Chicago, 1911), 5.

         4. London, 1910, articles “Pragmatism” and “William James’s Conception of Truth,” 87–149.

         5. “What Pragmatism Is,” Monist (April 1905); Carus, Truth on Trial, 116.

         6. [It is unclear what made Carus think that James did not know Peirce before 1897. For a more accurate account, see the introduction and chapter 7.]