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Early Childhood
Charles Peirce was a brilliant child who's father, a leading American intellectual and scientist, raised him and educated him to think originally and freely. -
Birth of the First American Philosopher
Charles Peirce (pronounced Purse) was born to Benjamin Peirce and Sarah Hunt Mills (daughter of Senator Elijah Hunt Mills. He was the second of five children. -
Shaping his philosophical views
Peirce was a brilliant child and began his true studies in philosophy and logic by the age of 12. He was reading University level texts by this point and within a year he had begun reading "Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant. This would be a major influence for the rest of his life. -
Peirce develops his views on logic and the "Scientific Method"
Peirce began to develop his own views on logic. While most philosophers of the time saw two types of logic, Deductive and Inductive, Peirce concluded that there were two classes of Inductive reasoning, inductive inferences and abductive inferences. Abduction, as Peirce saw it was hypothesis. He used these logics combined to create his view of the "Scientific Method". In his view these all came together to create a "systematic procedure for seeking truth" (Burch, 2014). -
"The Fixation of Belief"
Peirce published a series of six articles between November 1877 and August 1878, and were published in Popular Science Monthly. The first of these articles was called "The Fixation of Belief". Peirce used this article to extol the greater benefits of the Scientific Method in the pursuit of "fixing belief". Peirce was not just a philosopher, but was an acting physical scientist for the better part of his life. His views on the scientific method were rooted deeply in this practice (Burch, 2014). -
"How to Make Our Ideas Clear"
One of the two articles Peirce published under his series "Illustrations of the Logic of Science". This article focused using pragmatism to provide clear understanding of thoughts and concepts. Due to his experience in the field of science and a view that philosophy and logic were the philosophy of science and the logic of science. Further, he created his own word "pragmaticism" as his way of defining his own philosophy from others that called themselves pragmatic (Burch, 2014). -
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Development of Tychism and Continuity
Peirce writes four articles the journal The Monist in essence explaining his view of chance in the world and the universe. In his April 1892 article he speaks more of the idea of Tychism, which is his name for the chance inherent in the universe. In July of 1892 is when he actually names the concept of absolute chance Tychism, in this article he further discusses and lays out the concept of Continuity within thought and philosophy (Charles Sanders Peirce, N.A.)