Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914)

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

Geodesist, philosopher of science

Source

Background. Charles Sanders Peirce, one of the greatest of American philosophers, was the son of Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880), superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey in 1867-1874 and a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Harvard University. Charles Peirce, who used to say he was raised in a laboratory, received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard in 1863, as a member of the first class to graduate from the Lawrence Scientific School. Having already joined the Coast Survey as a temporary aide in 1859, Peirce went to work for the Survey full-time in 1861 and as a result was exempted from military service during the Civil War. He remained a member of the Coast Survey until 1891. He specialized in gravity research, but the accuracy of his observations during the solar eclipses of 1869 and 1870 also identified him as a first-rate observational astronomer, and he went on to measure the magnitudes of the stars in the galactic cluster that includes the Sun.

Measuring Gravity. In 1875 Peirce learned how to use the new convertible pendulum to measure gravity. Comparing his results with those obtained in Europe, he found an error in European measurement caused by the pendulum stand. As a result the Repsold pendulum used by the Coast Survey was replaced by one Peirce invented in 1878. In 1879 Peirce determined the length of a meter from a wavelength of light, anticipating the later experiments of Albert Michelson. In 1882 he made a mathematical study of the relationship between the variation of gravity and the shape of the Earth.

Philosophy. From 1879 to 1884 Peirce was a lecturer in logic at Johns Hopkins University but devoted much of his time to mathematics, developing a philosophy of mathematics based on the notion that mathematicians are concerned with what is logically possible, but not with actual reality. During the 1880s and 1890s he devised a classification of knowledge. Mathematics was the first science, while normative science had three divisions: aestheticism, ethics, and logic. He called logic the science of how humans should obtain their objectives. After leaving the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1891, Peirce devoted himself mainly to philosophy. He has been recognized as the founder of the distinctly American school of philosophy called pragmatism, whose adherents also included William James and John Dewey.

Evolution. Like virtually all other American scientists of his day, Peirce was an evolutionist and sought to formulate philosophical concepts in accord with evolutionary theories. He shared with the leading American scientists of his generation a belief in a theory first formulated by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829): the doctrine that characteristics acquired by an organism during its lifetime may be passed on genetically to its offspring. Peirce believed that humans were born with their minds already adapted to identify the laws of nature more readily than if they had attempted to guess them by chance. Thus, he believed that common sense would tell which scientific hypotheses are true and which are not. Because of these views, he was also convinced that the direction of evolution was toward ever-increasing order.

Source

Carolyn Eisele, “Charles Sanders Peirce,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 18 volumes (New York: Scribners, 1970) X: 482-488;

Murray G. Murphey, The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961).