Preamble—Peircean Habit Explored: Before, During, After; and Beneath, Behind, Beyond

Abstract

Charles Sanders Peirce, far more than any scholar in recent centuries in the West, devoted much of his productive life to probing the idea of and behavior of “habit”. In order to do so, he both narrowed and widened his focus on the notion. Otherwise an ordinary term in quotidian use in English, habit suggests regularity, usually pertaining to individual human behavior—but Peirce also focused on habit’s utility for understanding behavior beyond the human, and even processes beyond the organic world. In pursuit of refining and operationalizing habit, Peirce drew on any number of disciplines, close to and far from his expertise—these spanning from logic/philosophy, biology and psychology to theology and cosmology. Peirce’s foundational work on habit continues to be irresistible for contemporary humanities scholars, social scientists, scientists, and for practitioners beyond the academy diagnosing the ills of self and society, as Peirce’s oeuvre in its infra-dialectical form (frequently in fragmentary paragraphs), cannot be satisfactorily appreciated through any rear-view mirror. Rather, one might say that, in recognizing the habits behind habits and habit-change—whether confirming them through belief or challenging them through doubt—Peirce still invites us to permute, expand, contest, and refine his explorations of a century ago.