Abstract
Charles S. Peirce, polymath, philosopher, logician, lived a life of often wild extremes and, when he died in 1914, had earned a vile reputation as a debauched genius. Yet he created a unified, profound and brilliant work, both published and unpublished, a fact difficult to explain. In my 1993 biography, I proposed three hypotheses to account for his “Jekyll-Hyde” character: his obsession with the puzzle of meaning, two neurological pathologies, trigeminal neuralgia and left-handedness, and the powerful influence of his father. After publication, further research has led me to propose two additional hypotheses to explain his extraordinary life: manic-depressive illness and mystical experience, the last greatly influencing the development of his doctrine of semeiotic, of which his logic of science is a part.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brent, Duncan: 1967, Of the Seer and the Vision, Menno Hertzberger & Co., Amsterdam.
Brent, Joseph: 1993, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Buchler, Justus: 1939, Charles Peirce's Empiricism, Keegan Paul, London.
Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.
Chapman, John Jay: 1937, John Jay Chapman and his Letters. Edited by Mark deWolfe Howe. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.
Collingwood, R. G.: 1946, The Idea of History, Oxford University Press, New York, a Galaxy book.
Feibleman, James K.: 1946, An Introduction to Peirce's Philosophy Interpreted as A System. With a forward by Bertrand Russell. Harper & Brothers, New York.
Fisch, Max H.: 1954, ‘Alexander Bain and the Geneology of Pragmatism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 15, 157–59.
Fisch, Max H.: 1952, ‘Peirce at the Johns Hopkins University’, (with Jackson I. Cope), in Philip P. Wiener and Frederic H. Young (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gallie, W. B.: 1952, Peirce and Pragmatism, Penguin Books.
Gilman, Daniel C.: Papers. Special Collections. The Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
Goudge, Thomas A.: 1950, The Thought of C. S. Peirce, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Houser, Nathan: 1986, ‘Introduction’, The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Vol. 4. Edited by the Peirce Project. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Huxley, Aldous: 1944, The Perennial Philosophy, Harper & Brothers, New York.
James, William: Papers. The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Jamison, Kay Redfield: 1993, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan, Inc., New York.
Maritain, Jacques: 1956, ‘Language and the Magic Sign’, Explorations 6, 58–64.
Maritain, Jacques: 1957, ‘Language and the Theory of Sign’, in Ruth Nanda Ashen (ed.), Language: an Enquiry into its Meaning, Harper & Borthers, New York.
Mendenhall, Thomas C.: Collection. Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, New York, New York.
Miller, Perry: 1954, American Thought: Civil War to World War I. Edited with an Introduction by Perry Miller, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
Murphey, Murray: 1961 and 1993, The Development of Peirce's Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reprinted with a new preface and appendix, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Bloomington.
Murphy, Murray: 1963, ‘Review of Joseph Brent, Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 29, 722–728.
Newcomb, Simon: Papers. Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.
Ogden, C. K. and I. A. Richards: 1938 [1923], The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and the the Science of Symbolism, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York.
Orange, Donna: 1984, ‘Peirce's Conception of God: A Developmental Study’, Peirce Studies Number 2. Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, Lubbock, Texas.
Peirce, Charles S.: 1931–35, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Vols. 1–6. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Peirce, Charles S.: 1958, in Arthur Burks (ed.), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Vols. 7–8. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Peirce, Charles S.: 1992, in Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (eds.), The Essential Peirce, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Peirce, Charles S.: Papers. The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Peirce, Charles S.: 1992, in Kenneth Laine Ketner (ed.), Reasoning and the Logic of Things, with an Introduction by Kenneth L. Ketner and Hilary Putnam. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Peirce, Charles S.: 1870, Review of The Secret of Swedenborg: being an Elucidation of his Doctrine of the Divine Natural Sanctity, by Henry James [Sr.] The North American Review 110, 463–8.
Peirce, Charles S.: 1982-, Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Edited by the Peirce Project. Projected in thirty volumes. Indiana University Press: Bloomington.
Peirce, Juliette: Papers. Peirce Edition Project, Indiana— Purdue University, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Robin, Richard S.: 1967, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Thompson, Manley: 1953, The Pragmatic Philosophy of C. S. Peirce. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Whitney, William Dwight: 1902, Century Dictionary, Vol. V., The Century Company, New York.
Wilson, Edwin Bidwell: Papers. Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brent, J. Pursuing Peirce. Synthese 106, 301–322 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413589
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413589