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Birth
Charles Sanders Peirce was born on 10 September 1939 in Cambridge, MA. He was a mathematician and philosopher known as the father of pragmatism. His contributions to logic, semiotics, and philosophy are still widely used and taught today (Mastin). Photograph (Lane) -
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Work at the US Coast Survey
C. S. Peirce started his professional career as a mathematician at the US Coast Survey. His appointment came with the help of his father and allowed him to earn an income while pursuing his scientific and philosophical pursuits. While employed there he added to the theory of pendulum swinging for measuring gravitational force and was the first to calculate the length of the meter in terms of a wavelength of light. (Bellucci and Pietarinen; Douven;Editors, TheFamousPeople.com) -
Published Papers on Abduction
C. S. Peirce was the founder of a form of reasoning called abduction, which he started writing about in 1865 (C. Peirce). In this manner, you make a set of incomplete observations and you conclude the most likely cause for the observation. This becomes cyclical; after a conclusion is created, you test to verify. This is a more fluid reasoning method than inductive reasoning.(Douven). This video explains more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jX3OXwpEpl8
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Published "An Account of Signs"
Peirce contributed to Semiotics throughout his life and it had a big effect on his other ideas and works. This paper was his first major attempt to describe his theories. He continues revising and adding to it through 1910. He created a triadic model of the sign, stating that it has three elements: representamen, object, and interpretant. Later he identifies three main 'modes' into which signs can be assigned: symbol, icon and index(Bellucci and Pietarinen). Photograph (Noise-Semiotics). -
Father of Pragmaticsm
From November 1877 through August of 1878, C. S. Peirce published a series of papers in Popular Science Monthly. These papers are considered foundational to the branch of philosophy called pragmatics and revolutionized modern statistics. Pragmatics helps bridge theoretical, realistic and useful solutions to a problem (cited in assignment). The Cynical Historian has a good overview of pragmatics on his Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqPAnFfPJuk.
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John Hopkins Lecturer
Peirce was began teaching logic and philosophy at John Hopkins University in 1879. While there he, with his graduate students published "Studies in Logic" in 1883(C.S. Peirce), which contained collaborative work about various philosophies. He failed to get tenure due to a widely publicized scandal with his french mistress. This bad reputation followed him the rest of his life so, despite his known brilliance, he was never able to secure a permanent teaching position (Bellucci and Pietarinen). -
Death
Charles Sanders Peirce died on April 19th, 1914 in Milford, PA. After his death, 80,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts were sold to Harvard University by his wife and are still being digitized and studied (C. Peirce; Bellucci and Pietarinen; Mastin) Picture (Gravestone Charles Sanders Peirce and Juliette Peirce)