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Thursday, September 12, 2019

Charles Sanders Peirce

Introduction
He was a polymath and lived for 74 years.  He has a rich history and wrote books.  He was a mathematician and philosopher.  He dealt with math logic, probabilities, philosophical logic, ethics, metaphysics, etc.    He invented pragmatism.
History
He was a philosopher, scientist, mathematics, and much more. 

Childhood: He was in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 9/10/1839.  His father was a professor @ Harvard.  His parents have 5 other children.  He start going to Harvard when he was 16.  He got a master's @ Harvard and a Bachelor of Science from Lawrence Scientific School.  He was a professor and gave lectures @ 2 universities. 

Mid-Life:  His married Harriet Melusina Fay in 1862.  She was a writer and helped him with his scientific works.  She was a feminist.  He cheated on her with Juliette Annette Froissy Pourtalai.  He wife left him and he had a nervous breakdown.  They divorced in 1883, 2 days later he married Juliette.

End-Life: He was poor in in the early 20th century.  His friends and students would give him $ from time to time.  In 1909 he got cancer; he was taking morphine everyday 4 the pain.  Even though pain was almost unbearable, he continued to write.  Juliette donated his wrings to Harvard after he died in 1914.             
Books
There are many books that came from his writings.  There is also bibliographies written about him.

Chance, Love, Logic: It was a collection of his essays.  It was about taxation, ideas, probability, nature, theories, mind, etc. 

Peirce on Signs: It is a collection of his essays.  They dealt with metaphysics, logic, belief, pragmatism, etc.

The Essential Peirce, Volume 2: It is about reasoning, logic, meanings, god, philosophy, science, etc.

There are other books, but this will suffice.
    
Math
Logic: description and analysis; math is deduction.  It separates good thinking from bad thinking.  Ethics creates logic and it is the mother of metaphysics.  Logic informs what should think about.  There are 3 branches of logic: speculative grammar, critics, and speculative rhetoric.  He called logic semiotic, which is the study of symbols.     

Probabilities: Science is full of chance.  The only thing certain is change.  Atoms blink!!!!!!!!!!

Statistics: He was a founder of this field.  He created " blinded, controlled randomized experiment" with help from Joseph Jastrow. 

Philosophy
Ethics: Good is knowledge and ignorance is evil.  Good leads us to reality and evil takes us away from it.  We must be deliberate and control ourselves  to do good. 

Metaphysics: It has 3 branches: ontology, religious, and physical.  He was a scholastic realist, believed in one god, and an objective idealist.

Pragmatism: He created this philosophy.  It is using any means to get the best ends.
Conclusion
Charles Sanders Peirce was the modern day Aristotle!  He did a lot academically.  He was great with math and philosophy.  He the father of pragmatism.  There are several books based on his writing.       

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce
http://npshistory.com/publications/dewa/spanning-the-gap/v22-3.pdf
https://www.iep.utm.edu/peir-log/
https://www.iep.utm.edu/peircepr/
https://philosophynow.org/issues/43/Charles_Sanders_Peirce_The_Architect_of_Pragmatism
http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/Peirce.pdf
http://www.peirce.org/life.html

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