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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION
KEY THINKERS IN EDUCATION

David Plowright

Charles Sanders
Peirce
Pragmatism and
Education

123
SpringerBriefs in Education

Key Thinkers in Education

Series editor
Paul Gibbs, London, UK
This briefs series publishes compact (50 to 125 pages) refereed monographs under
the editorial supervision of the Advisory Editor, Professor Paul Gibbs, Middlesex
University, Nicosia, Cyprus. Each volume in the series provides a concise
introduction to the life and work of a key thinker in education and allows readers to
get acquainted with their major contributions to educational theory and/or practice
in a fast and easy way.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10197

David Plowright

Charles Sanders Peirce

Pragmatism and Education

123
David Plowright
Centre for Higher and Adult Education
Stellenbosch University
Stellenbosch
South Africa

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic)

SpringerBriefs in Education
ISSN 2211-937X
SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in
ISBN 978-94-017-7355-3
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7356-0
ISSN 2211-9388 (electronic)
Education
ISBN 978-94-017-7356-0 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015953783

Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London

© The Author(s) 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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To Allison and Alexandra.
And thank you to three natural
pragmatists, Minkie, Tommy and Lizzie,
for your constant companionship.
Acknowledgements

I have drawn extensively on the work of C.S. Peirce from the Collected Papers of
Charles Sanders Peirce, published by Harvard University Press.
Quotations from volumes I and II are reprinted by permission of the publisher
from COLLECTED PAPERS OF CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE: VOLUMES
I–II, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1931, 1932, 1959, 1960 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Quotations from volumes III and IV are reprinted by permission of the publisher
from COLLECTED PAPERS OF CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE: VOLUMES
III–IV, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1933, 1961 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Quotations from volumes V and VI are reprinted by permission of the publisher
from COLLECTED PAPERS OF CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE: VOLUMES
V–VI, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1935, 1963 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Quotations from volumes VII and VIII are reprinted by permission of the
publisher from COLLECTED PAPERS OF CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE:
VOLUMES VII–VIII, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Cambridge,
Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986 by
the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

vii
Contents

1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Peirce’s Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Career . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Personality and Behaviour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2 Introducing Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Pragmatic Maxim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Belief and Habit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Belief and Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Belief and Doubt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
First Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Second Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Third Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Settling a Belief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Next. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

3 Inquiry and Inferential Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Methods of Fixing Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Logical Inference and Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Abduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Elements of an Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Abduction: Where are These White Beans from? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Deduction: Why are the Beans on the Table White?. . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Induction: What Colour are All the Beans in the Bag? . . . . . . . . . . 34

ix
x Contents

Final Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

4 Inferential Logic and Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Abduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Classification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Probations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Gradual Induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Sentential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5 Semiotics: The Theory of Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Sign. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
The Three Trichotomies of Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
First Trichotomy of Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Qualisign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Sinsign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Legisign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Danger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Second Trichotomy of Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
No Pure Icon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

6 Semiotics Continued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Index Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Symbol. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Peirce’s Third Trichotomy of Signs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Immediate Interpretant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Dynamical Interpretant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Final Interpretant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Rheme, Dicisgn and Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Finally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

7 The Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
The Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Firstness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Contents xi

Secondness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Thirdness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

8 Final Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Book Description

Charles Sanders Peirce, Pragmatism and Education introduces a number of

selected ideas from the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of pragmatism.
Peirce, pronounced ‘purse’, was born in America in 1839 and died in 1914. He
published little in his own lifetime and he continually struggled to become
recognised as a respected author with ideas that were highly creative, original and
unique.
The book begins with an examination of Peirce’s life history. This is followed by
an explanation of pragmatism, which states that an understanding of a concept can
only be fully grasped by knowing what its practical effects are. The author then
explains a number of Peirce’s ideas that are based on his pragmatic maxim:
• scientific inquiry as a method of investigation and its relevance to everyday
thinking;
• inferential thinking based on abduction, deduction and induction and its use in
educational research;
• semiotics, the study of signs and its relevance to the development of conceptual
understanding;
• his profound and insightful ontological categories of Firstness, Secondness and
Thirdness and their application to developing an understanding of the world
around us.
This introductory text is written in a clear and accessible style for students of
philosophy as well as non-specialists who are interested in understanding C.S.
Peirce’s pragmatism. Numerous examples are used throughout the book to illustrate
Peirce’s complex and sophisticated ideas and to show how his thinking can be
applied to education.

xiii
A Note on Referencing Peirce’s Writings

As is the usual convention, the following have been applied when referring to
publications of Peirce’s writing.
References to work from volumes 1 to 6 of the Collected Papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce edited by Hartshorne, C. and Weiss, P. and volumes 7 and 8 edited
by Burks, A. W., take the form of volume: paragraph number, for example (5:412).
Reference to The Essential Peirce, edited by the Peirce Edition Project, is pre-
sented as EP volume: page number, for example (EP 2:478).
Reference to Peirce’s letters to Mary Lady Welby in Semiotics and Significs
compiled by Charles S. Hardwick, is presented as L.W. followed by page number,
for example (LW: 89).

xv
About the Author

Dr. David Plowright is an experienced lecturer, researcher, programme director,

supervisor and examiner at master’s and doctoral levels.
He spends his time in the UK and South Africa. He currently works as a
Research Associate in the Centre for Higher and Adult Education, Stellenbosch
University, South Africa, and as a consultant doctoral supervisor for the Centre for
Research in Education and Educational Technology, Open University, UK.
His main academic concerns lie in the potential for developing possibilities in
re-conceptualising the process of educational inquiry, which are reflected in his
interest in the ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce.

xvii
Chapter 1
The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

Abstract This chapter provides a brief introduction to C.S. Peirce’s background

and an outline of his life story. It explains that Peirce was born in America in 1839
and died in 1914. He published little in his own lifetime and he continually
struggled to become recognised as a respected author with ideas that were original
and unique. Over his lifetime, he developed an expertise in logic, philosophy,
history, linguistics, geodesy, gravimetrics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and
cosmology. He was the founder of pragmatism, of semiotics and of new creations in
inferential logic and a method of inquiry that could be applied to scientific problems
as well as education and daily living. Despite his achievements, he was a difficult
man to relate to and he led a tragic life that ended in obscurity, poverty and
unhappiness. He died without the recognition that many now believe he rightly
deserved. This introductory chapter concludes that the reason for his lack of success
in life was due to three factors: first, the complexity and sophistication of his
philosophy; second, his personality and behaviour and third, his lifestyle which was
morally questionable for the times he lived in.

Keywords Peirce Peirce’s life story Pragmatism
Pragmaticism
Education



Semiotics Arisbe

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of pragmatism and this book is an intro-
duction to a selection of his ideas and a brief overview of his life. His name is
pronounced ‘purse’ and he was born in America in 1839 and died in 1914. The
book is aimed mainly at non-philosophers who want to know something about
pragmatism and to anyone who might have an interest in developing links between
education and the ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce.
Any mention of Peirce’s name will probably elicit either blank or questioning
stares since he still generates limited interest outside of philosophical circles. It is
likely that you will be more familiar with the educational ideas of John Dewey and
William James, who were contemporaries of Peirce and developed different per-
spectives on pragmatism. You may also have come across philosophers such as
Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam, who were both born at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and are sometimes referred to as neo-pragmatists. Their

© The Author(s) 2016 1

D. Plowright, Charles Sanders Peirce, SpringerBriefs on Key
Thinkers in Education, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7356-0_1
2 1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

understandings of pragmatism spring from the original and innovative ideas of

Charles Sanders Peirce.
I initially encountered Peirce’s ideas when writing Using Mixed Methods:
Frameworks for an Integrated Methodology (Plowright 2011). Social and educa-
tional researchers who deploy a mixed methods strategy tend to draw on elements
of pragmatism as an epistemological framework for their research. However, to
identify clear and distinct links between a pragmatic philosophy and the practi-
calities of undertaking empirical research is not easy. This is especially the case
when drawing on the complexities of Peirce’s pragmatism.
As I became more familiar and increasingly fascinated with the detail of Peirce’s
pragmatism, I found it a struggle to make the leap from the sophisticated com-
plexities of his ideas to making sense of a wide range of educational issues. The
task was not an easy one, due to the difficulty of understanding the wealth and often
impenetrability of Peirce’s writings and the varying interpretations of his com-
mentators. However, I persevered and the result is this book. With hindsight, my
purpose in writing the book, therefore, was twofold: first, to clarify my own
understanding about what pragmatism was and second, to apply that understanding
generally to the field of education.
A colleague once said to me that the most under-used phrase in academic texts,
especially those relating to philosophical matters, was ‘for example’. This often also
applies to Peirce’s writings. I hope, therefore, that the following chapters contain
sufficient examples that help to illustrate his ideas and also go some way, on this
occasion, to addressing my colleague’s concerns. It aims to achieve this by
attempting to make Peirce’s ideas clear, with examples as illustrations, and by also
not assuming that its readers have substantial background knowledge in philosophy.
At the same time, it should be borne in mind that this is an introductory text and
therefore runs the risk of over-simplifying the ideas that are being presented. I will
apologise in advance, therefore, in case I am guilty of this and, even worse, of
omitting areas of his work that some readers will feel are essential ingredients in the
richness of his pragmatism.
First of all, however, the story starts, below, with a brief outline of Peirce’s
biography and gives some insight into his life. The chapter that follows provides an
introduction to Peirce’s pragmatism. In brief, this is a logical method of thinking
that aims to arrive at the meaning of a concept in terms of its practical effects. It
sounds simplistic, but as with all Peirce’s thinking, it leads to a kaleidoscope of
ideas that is both complex and sophisticated.
The next chapter, Chap. 3, introduces Peirce’s use of inferential thinking as a
basis for his method of inquiry,1 which he developed from his pragmatism. You
will discover that this is not an explicitly practical method but it is a theoretical
approach and one that can be applied to any investigation that aims to develop our
knowledge further. You will find it especially apposite to the aims and purposes of

1
Being American, Peirce used the term ‘inquiry’ which in British usage is also acceptable and is
the spelling used in this book to avoid any confusion.
1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce 3

education. This is followed by Chap. 4, which examines how Peirce went on to

apply inferential logic to the process of inquiry. The chapter focuses on educational
inquiry and you will discover that Peirce introduced a clearer and more helpful way
of conceptualising this process.
Chapters 5 and 6 outline his semiotics, the theory of signs, which is about how
things come to represent or stand for other things. This is another area of Peirce’s
work that appears to be relatively straightforward. However, predictably, Peirce’s
semiotics is far more complex than this basic description would suggest. For Peirce,
everything starts with and returns to the study of signs.
Chapter 7 examines Peirce’s ontological categories. Although this is the last
substantive chapter of the book, the ideas discussed are perhaps the most interesting
and important in Peirce’s far-reaching philosophy of pragmatism.
Finally, Chap. 8 provides a brief summary and conclusion to this introductory
book, which briefly outlines a selection of ideas from one of the world’s most
fascinating philosophers. Throughout the chapters, you will find that Peirce’s ideas
are illustrated by drawing on examples from the field of education, a task that few
writers have attempted previously.
It remains surprising, even now, that Peirce’s work is still relatively unknown. In
1931 John Dewey, Peirce’s former student, wrote:
Pragmatism…presents itself as an extension of historical empiricism, but with this fun-
damental difference, that it does not insist upon antecedent phenomena but upon conse-
quent phenomena; not upon the precedents but upon the possibilities of action. And this
change in point of view is almost revolutionary in its consequences (Dewey 1931: 32–33).

Even a cursory glance through Peirce’s work would suggest that Dewey was
rather circumspect in his comments, since it is arguable that Peirce’s contribution to
thinking was, indeed, revolutionary.

Peirce’s Life

Charles Sanders Peirce was born on 10 September 1839 in Cambridge,

Massachusetts in the USA. He died on 19 April 1914. He published little in his own
lifetime and he continually struggled to become recognised as a respected author
and a credible authority. He was a difficult man to relate to, creating barriers
between himself and those who might have supported his efforts to secure a per-
manent academic position that would have enabled him to carve out a niche and a
name for himself. In fact, he appeared to lead a tragic and sad life that ended in
obscurity, poverty and unhappiness.
His ideas were truly original and unique. He was precocious as a child and a
genius as an adult. However, he claimed only that his approach was ‘pedestrian’,
which meant that his successes were due to his painstaking, almost obsessive
4 1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

attention to detail and precision in working out his ideas. But, as you will read, he
fell foul of the narrow-minded conservatism of the New England academic and
social community that denied him the opportunities and the recognition he rightly
deserved. His greatest sin was that he did not fit in with their society and their
community. As a consequence, he suffered the deliberate and debilitating rejection
and exclusion that often befalls someone who is very different from those around
them; this, despite many eminent academic figures, contemporary with Peirce,
describing him as the most brilliant and original mind of his place and time. For
those whose ideas are different, innovative and creative, it makes for disturbing
reading.
His story is one of a fall from professional and social riches to a life of desti-
tution, isolation and literal rags. It ends with a living begged from a few remaining
friends and supporters who cared for him at the end of his life of 75 years.
It is only with hindsight, of course, that we can see the trajectory of a life that
struggled unsuccessfully to confront the personal and professional challenges and
demands that eventually became too overwhelming to cope with. Towards the end
of his life, however, there were signs of some optimism that success and recognition
were within Peirce’s grasp but they did not materialise, at least not within his own
lifetime.
As we look at Peirce’s biography, it is perhaps too easy to offer reasons for the
way his life evolved and how his ideas developed. There is too strong a risk that too
much guesswork will do a disservice to such a complex and unusual individual who
is now considered to be one of the most impressive thinkers in the history of
philosophy and logic. But one thing is certain: reading through the story of his life,
it is difficult not to feel angry, saddened and truly despondent at the way Peirce was
treated by his contemporaries, especially those from the academic world.
Among other abilities, he developed an expertise in logic, philosophy, history,
linguistics, geodesy, gravimetrics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and cosmology.
He was the founder of semiotics, of pragmatism and of new creations in inferential
logic and a method of inquiry that could be applied to scientific problems as well as
education and daily living. He was highly respected in Europe and in addition,
outside his academic interests, he became a connoisseur of fine wines and a talented
dramatist. It sounds an enviable lifestyle, but his story is one of increasing failure to
establish himself as a respected scholar in the eyes of his peers. He had some
success in Europe and Britain, but he died without the recognition that many now
believe he rightly deserved.

Family

The Peirce family was descended from John Pers or Peirce, a weaver who lived in
Norwich, in seventeenth century England. The family emigrated to Massachusetts
in 1637 and so began the chain of events that was to lead to the story told here. This
Family 5

account of his life relies heavily on the work of Brent (1998), whose excellent
biography of Peirce is well worth spending time with.
His parents were Benjamin Peirce, the brilliant Harvard mathematician and
astronomer, and Sarah Hunt Mills, the daughter of Senator Elijah Hunt Mills. The
Peirce family was prominent socially, politically and intellectually in the highly
conservative and traditional New England of the time.
By the time of Charles’s birth, the family had well-established and close con-
nections with Harvard University. Peirce’s paternal grandfather, Benjamin Peirce
senior (1778–1831) was the university librarian. Charles Peirce’s father, Benjamin
Peirce junior (1809–1880), graduated from Harvard University in 1829, then taught
mathematics and astronomy at the university for 49 years, becoming a highly
distinguished and respected professor of mathematics. He was considered the most
famous mathematician of his generation.
Benjamin Peirce junior’s brother, Charles Henry Peirce, was a physician and
professor of chemistry at the Lawrence Scientific School which was founded at
Harvard University in 1847. Benjamin’s sister, Charlotte Elizabeth Peirce (1804–
1888), was a schoolteacher with tastes in French and German literature.
Charles Peirce was the second of four brothers, and one sister, Helen Huntingdon
Peirce (1845–1923). Peirce’s older brother, James Peirce (1834–1906) graduated
from Harvard in 1853 and was a member of the Harvard faculty from 1861 to his
death in 1906. He taught maths, was the first dean of the graduate school from 1890
to 1895 and was dean of the faculty of arts and sciences from 1895 to 1898.
A second brother, Benjamin Mills Peirce (1844–1870) showed great promise as an
engineer but died young. Another brother, Herbert Henry Davis Peirce (1849–
1916), had a distinguished career in the US Foreign Service.
Charles, clearly, had a lot to live up to.
His early childhood was characterised by the role his father played in his
upbringing. Benjamin Peirce was an unusual and unconventional man who, above
all else, valued independence and individualism in his children. The Peirce children,
therefore, were indulged by their parents and were neither disciplined nor taught
self-control. This appeared to have had a profound effect on Charles’s early
experiences of education, which was characterised by poor academic performance
and, not surprisingly, an inability to accept the disciplined atmosphere that would
have been imposed on pupils by any school at that time. As a result, he was taken
out of school and taught at home by his father. Predictably, his father concentrated
on mathematics and the sciences but if Benjamin Peirce’s home teaching was
anything like his Harvard lectures, then it is small wonder that Charles’s education
progressed very much at all. According to the reminiscences of Prof. Emeritus W.E.
Byerly, a former student of Benjamin Peirce, his lectures were difficult to follow
and preparation was clearly not his strong point:
The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with
frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was
always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly
6 1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell
announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his
work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class
(Archibald 1925, p. 6).

His approach with Charles, however, was fortunately more successful. He

encouraged him to think ideas through for himself and take responsibility for
tackling difficult mathematical problems. For example, he gave him geometry
problems to solve but without providing the basic theorems on which to base the
solution. Charles therefore had to work from first principles and work out the
theories for himself. In addition, his father encouraged Charles to pursue his interest
in chemistry so that at the age of 8 years, he began to study the subject on his own
and at the age of 12 set up his own chemistry laboratory with the help of his uncle,
Charles Henry Peirce. In 1851, at the same age of 12, Charles read Richard
Whately’s highly influential Elements of Logic, originally published in 1826.
Remarkably, even at that early age, it had a profound effect on him and it was this
publication that was the start of Charles’s lifelong dedication to the study of logic.

Career

Charles’s formal academic career began with his graduation from Harvard in 1859.
He came a not very impressive 71st out of 90 students in his cohort. The informality
of his home schooling no doubt produced an independence of thought that ill-fitted
the stiflingly formal rigidity of study at Harvard that was based on rote learning and
repetitive drilling exercises. Even as an undergraduate he believed the work he was
expected to undertake was beneath his abilities. In general, he was contemptuous of
the education he received.
Despite this contempt, reinforced by his father’s view of his son’s abilities and
early achievements outside of formal education, Peirce persevered with his aca-
demic life. In 1862 he received an MA from Harvard and in 1863 an ScB, with
honours, in chemistry.
His first serious career move was when, in 1861, he was appointed to a full-time
position with the prestigious US Coast Survey, thanks to his father, who held a
senior position in the organisation. Although not the academic post in a university
that he wished for so much, it provided him with a secure financial base that could
be used to ensure a reliable income for the following 30 years. During this time his
work involved measuring the earth’s gravitational pull and contributing to the
improved accuracy of the measurement process, which brought him respect and
fame, not in America but in Europe and Britain. However, in 1875 he was the first
ever American delegate to attend the Paris international geodetic conference, where
he presented a paper that made a significant contribution to the determination of the
gravitational constant.
In addition to the full-time employment he secured with the US Coast Survey,
from 1869 to 1872 he worked as an assistant at the Harvard Observatory, which had
Career 7

been established in 1839, the year of Peirce’s birth. He studied stellar photometry,
which led to a series of observations from 1872 to 1875 that culminated in
Photometric Researches (1878), the only book that Peirce ever published.
Peirce’s desire, if not ambition, however, was to hold a tenured, full-time pro-
fessorship at Harvard University. Throughout his life, he found this an impossibility
to achieve. He did, however, have a limited number of opportunities to present and
promote his ideas. During 1869 and 1870 he gave the Harvard University lectures
on philosophy and from 1870 to 1871 he was the Harvard University lecturer in
logic. In 1879 he was appointed part-time lecturer in logic at John Hopkins
University but was dismissed from the post in 1884, bringing to an end the only
official university post he held in his lifetime.
He was, however, throughout his life, a prolific writer, generating thousands of
pages of unique and original ideas on logic and philosophy. Due to his lack of a
university post or support for his writing, he was not able to disseminate his ideas
and theories to a wide audience. After his dismissal from John Hopkins, he did
manage to give a number of lectures at various venues in Boston and the sur-
rounding area during the rest of his life. But for someone as brilliant and creative as
Peirce, it was an unsatisfactory situation that was painful and frustrating to say the
least and one that he was never able to resolve nor ever come to terms with.
The reason for his failure, which is the only word to describe it, was due to three
factors: first, the nature of his difficult to understand ideas and theories; second, his
personality and behaviour and third, the lifestyle he led. All three created insur-
mountable problems for Peirce during the whole of his adult life and remained with
him until his death in 1914.

Ideas

His writings and his ideas were often complex and highly sophisticated and are now
considered to be well before his time. Often, however, others found his writing
bewildering and they simply did not understand his ideas. In addition, throughout
his lifetime he developed and progressed his thinking, often through his writing,
which inevitably meant that they changed over the years. A startling example of this
is that he started out accepting a nominalist perspective about epistemology and
ontology but later, towards the end of his life, his views drifted to a realist position.
Another frustrating characteristic of Peirce’s writing was that he coined new
terminology or used terms that were not common in his day, such as phaneron and
phaneroscopy for, respectively, phenomenon and phenomenology; synechism,
meaning continuity of the universe and the more commonly known term tychism,
meaning chance. He even changed pragmatism to pragmaticism, a term which
Peirce believed ‘ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers’ (5.414).
In addition, he introduced the term ‘abduction’, which is from his ideas about
inferential logic and is used in describing the first stage of the inquiry process when
undertaking empirical investigations of real-world phenomena. Overall, his work
8 1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

created a new architectonic, or holistic, system of a complex and sophisticated

ontology that provided the basis of a series of new, universal categories that he
termed Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.
His architectonic is difficult to understand and he readily acknowledged that,
throughout his life, he had an inability to explain his ideas clearly so that others
could understand him. He often put this inability, of expressing his thoughts on
paper, down to hereditary and curiously, being left-handed.

Personality and Behaviour

However, the most far-reaching obstacle to Peirce’s success in his own lifetime was
his personality. It would be an understatement to describe him as being a difficult
person. He was seen as arrogant and snobbish, ill at ease with small talk and
socially uncomfortable with strangers. He was at times unpredictable, aggressive,
irritable and overly critical of anyone who did not understand his ideas. He could be
morose, cold and impatient and he often showed violent outbursts of temper. On
other occasions, however, he could be helpful, supportive, cheerful and pleasant,
engaging in scholarly conversations with those he felt he could relax and feel
comfortable with.
Although his attitude and behaviour to others were clearly, at times highly
objectionable and unacceptable, they were perhaps explained, although not justi-
fied, partly by his background. He was a member of an elitist social class in
nineteenth century New England and was, at the time, one of a very few who had a
privileged college and university education. Above all, his upbringing in the Peirce
family home, involving the pressure and intensity of his home education and the
cultured, demanding atmosphere, must have resulted in feelings of anxiety and a
desire to please his father and meet his high academic standards and demands. That
experience must also have resulted in the feelings of superiority and arrogance that
were expressed in a variety of ways on different occasions throughout his lifetime.
To make matters worse, he had an inability to manage the practicalities of his life
including, for example, his ineptness at financial matters, his lack of organisation
and order in his work and life and his refusal to follow the usual conventions of, for
example, turning up to his lectures and starting publishable work that he never
completed. He was overly sensitive to criticism, quick to take offense and appeared
to excel in upsetting people.
Together with his intellectual ability and unique ideas, his difficult personality is
one of the overwhelming characteristics that dominate accounts of his life.
However, apart from his upbringing and education, there may be two more
important explanations for the behaviour that alienated him from friends and pro-
fessional colleagues.
First, from an early age, Peirce suffered from trigeminal neuralgia, which is a
debilitating and painful condition affecting the nerves in the side of the face. Peirce
took increasingly strong analgesics to try and control the pain. These consisted of
Personality and Behaviour 9

ether, alcohol, morphine and cocaine. It was almost inevitable that, using such a
cocktail of drugs over a period of time, Peirce eventually became addicted. It is no
surprise, therefore, that together with his aggression, social ineptness and insensi-
tivity to others, Peirce was reputed to be a difficult person to get on with. His violent
rages, that appeared not to have any cause or reason, were probably due to both the
pain he experienced and the effects of the drugs.
A second source of difficulty that Peirce experienced was the manic-depressive
illness from which he may have suffered. Currently referred to more appropriately
as bipolar disorder, Peirce’s behaviour over his lifetime appeared to be symptomatic
of the uncontrollable mood swings associated with the disorder. During his lifetime
he experienced a number of nervous breakdowns that were depressive in nature and
could last for months and included threats of suicide.
It was no surprise, therefore, that from an early age, both his father and his
mother took every opportunity to shelter him from the world outside the home.
They provided Charles with support whenever, and for as long as, they could. They
would have offered him the kind of protection without which he would probably
have sunk even deeper into his maladies. Charles’s appointment, and subsequent
promotion in the US Coastal Survey, was one such example of his father’s nepo-
tism. As head of the survey, Benjamin Peirce was well placed to protect his son
from the, at least overt, criticisms and complaints of his fellow-workers.
Despite the resistance to his ideas and his treatment of those around him, it is
feasible that he could still have managed to achieve the full-time tenured academic
appointment that he so much desired. It is quite possible that this would have
provided him with the much sought after opportunity that would have resulted in
his success and acceptance as a respected scholar and philosopher. However, there
was a third source of difficulty that created, if not the final straw, then an additional
and overwhelming barrier to his progress in academic circles.

Lifestyle

In 1863, at the age of 24 years, he married Harriet Melusina Fay. Zina, the
shortened version of her name, was an assertive, well-educated puritan feminist
intellectual. She had studied science, philosophy, literature and history, which was
unusual for a young woman at that time, even of her social class and abilities. The
marriage lasted 13 years after which Zina was no longer prepared to tolerate his
aggression towards her, his inability to manage the practicalities of his life, espe-
cially those related to finances and finally his infidelity. She left the marriage in
1876 while they were both staying in Paris. Peirce reacted badly and it resulted in
his nervous collapse, including a complete paralysis that lasted for some weeks.
Shortly after the separation, Peirce met his second wife, Juliette Annette
(Froissy) Pourtalai. There is some considerable mystery surrounding Juliette,
including her family origins, her place and date of birth and, perhaps surprisingly,
even her name. She was reputed to have royal connections with a family
10 1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

background in Russia or perhaps Eastern Europe. She appeared to have her own,
small income that eventually would support both herself and Peirce.
Despite all the mystery about Juliette, one thing was certain. Their relationship,
which started shortly after Peirce’s separation from Zina, was conducted in full
public gaze. They made no effort to keep it private nor to hide it away from the
gossip and disapproving criticisms it generated. Of course, if Peirce and Juliette
lived today, it is inconceivable that anyone would even raise an eyebrow or twitch a
corner of their net curtains over the affair. In nineteenth century New England,
however, such behaviour would have been seen as utterly scandalous and com-
pletely unacceptable.
Throughout this time Peirce attempted to secure a permanent university position.
He was expecting that his part-time post of lecturer in logic at Johns Hopkins
University would result in a professorship, which had been promised him. This did
not materialise and indeed he was dismissed from Johns Hopkins in 1884. The
reasons were never made public.
The overt affair he conducted with Juliette was a major factor in Peirce’s
ostracism by the morally respectable and conservative Bostonian society, including
his dismissal from Johns Hopkins. Sadly for Peirce, it was the beginning of the end
of his career and the potential academic and public, scholarly success of his work.
It is probably true to say, however, that the final deterioration in his situation was
a result of a combination of factors. It included the loss of the protection and
sponsorship of his father, who died in 1880; the dislike and suspicion that many felt
about Peirce; their lack of understanding of the importance of his ideas and his
work, some of which had by then been published in various journals and had made
a serious impact, but only outside of America; the increasing withdrawal of support
of those in powerful leadership positions in the academic and professional worlds
and the animosity they felt towards him due to his challenging personality and his
unconventional religious beliefs.
Probably most important of all, it was made worse, finally, by the very public
and adulterous affair that was brought to an end by his divorce from Zina in 1883
and his marriage to Juliette only two days later. But by now the damage had already
been done. With an increasing level of prejudice against them, Peirce and Juliette
were no longer welcomed by either his family or the elite social circles of Boston
and Cambridge of which the family were respected members. In 1891, after being
pressured to resign, he left the US Coastal Survey after 30 years, thus bringing to an
end a reliable source of income. In addition, he found himself increasingly in debt
due to buying Arisbe, a large house in Milford, Pennsylvania and continuing to
maintain an expensive apartment in New York City. This meant he was living way
beyond his financial means, a state that continued and increased during the rest of
his life.
After his dismissal from John Hopkins, Peirce was never offered an academic
post ever again although in later life he did give lectures about his ideas at Harvard,
which were paid for by money raised privately. But his ambitious plans for dis-
seminating his ideas and his desire to holding a tenured professorship amounted to
nothing.
Lifestyle 11

The last few years of Peirce’s life are heart breaking to read about. His final days
were spent in dreadful conditions. The Peirce’s income had begun to diminish to the
point where there was little food in the house. They were both suffering from ill
health and still relying on the charity of their friends. Both Charles and Juliette often
had to hide from the authorities since he was wanted for assault and the avoidance
of paying his debts. He still had a limited amount of paid work, writing reviews of
journal articles, but the income from this hardly amounted to much. They had no
children and Arisbe, the huge mansion of a house where they lived in Milford, had
now fallen into disrepair and dilapidation. For some years it had been unmanage-
able due to its size and condition and the amount of work it needed to make it fully
habitable. It had become a burden for them and remained so until Juliette’s death in
1934.
In 1907, William James, his friend of many years was horrified and shocked at
Charles’s drastic situation. On seeing how much he was suffering from illness and
hunger, he was moved to organise a financial fund for the impoverished and des-
titute Peirces, drawing on the goodwill of Charles’s few remaining friends. Two
years later, in 1909, Peirce was diagnosed with abdominal cancer that was to take
his life five years later.
For many, despite or because of its difficulties and challenges, age can bring
wisdom and insight. A life lived to the full, with energy and creative ideas, suc-
cesses and failures, pleasures and regrets often gives way to a more contemplative
and reflective attitude of the world. Peirce’s experience was no exception. Towards
the end of his life he finally began to realise that his suffering, loneliness and what
could only be described as a failed and wasted life, were all his own doing.
In 1892, he underwent a mystical or religious experience that changed the way
he viewed his ideas. His writing, of over 80,000 handwritten pages of unpublished
work at the end of his life, subsequently presented a more spiritual side to his
thinking. He attempted to bring together many of his ideas and create a finalised,
overarching systemic explanation about the reality and meaning of the cosmos. It
drew on his ideas about pragmatism, his method of inquiry, semiotics and logic and
his views about ontology and cosmology. He wrote that:
If…a man has had no religious experience, then any religion not an affectation is as yet
impossible for him; and the only worthy course is to wait quietly till such experience
comes. No amount of speculation can take the place of experience (1:655).

This last statement reflects the direction of his pragmatic thinking that privileged
experiential understanding above Cartesian rationality and the theoretical.
It is a pity that Peirce was not able to express his ideas more clearly and in a
more accessible style. If he had been able to, his writings may have reached a wider
audience during his lifetime. If he had been less difficult and got on better with his
peers, he may have had the support of his professional colleagues and superiors to
enable him to disseminate his ideas more successfully. If his way of life had been
less challenging to the society in which he lived or if that society had not been so
damning of what would now be thought as uncontroversial, his ideas might just
have had the impact they deserved. But it was not to be. Whatever the story of his
12 1 The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce

life, the intellectual power of his not inconsiderable and unique writings is now
indisputable.
Peirce did not write explicitly about education and his work provides little
insight into what his views were. However, one of the aims of this book is to
consider how his ideas might be applied to the field of education and there are a
number of examples in the chapters that follow. You will find that these range from
teaching and learning through to educational leadership and management and social
and educational research methodologies. Unfortunately, with the amount of space
available, it will only be possible to touch briefly on how, as educationists, we
might draw on his impressive range of creative and innovative ideas.
In addition, I feel confident that, if up to now you have been unfamiliar with
Peirce’s pragmatism, then once you encounter his ideas, you will find them fas-
cinating to read about—and rather addictive! It is to a selection of these ideas that
the rest of this book now turns.
Chapter 2
Introducing Pragmatism

Abstract This chapter briefly outlines Peirce’s pragmatic maxim that was the basis
of his philosophical ideas. It explains that pragmatism is a logical method of inquiry
that aims to arrive at an understanding of a concept, statement or proposition in
terms of its practical outcomes or effects. For Peirce, inquiry is about being able to
think clearly using a scientific method which is grounded in logical, inferential
reasoning based on the resolution of a doubt to arrive at a belief. Once established, a
belief leads to the establishment of a habit, a way of thinking. A habit acts as a rule
for action and can therefore influence and determine our behaviour. Peirce made a
distinction between belief and doubt, where doubt is the start of the questioning or
inquiry process and belief is the outcome of answering a question or coming to a
conclusion as a result of the inquiry. However, Peirce argued that all beliefs should
be treated as provisional, due partly to our fallibility as human beings, as well as the
amount of knowledge that we simply cannot access in our own lifetime. Therefore,
the most we can claim about our beliefs is that we think they are true. Brief
examples are used to illustrate how Peirce’s ideas can be applied to learning, the
development of conceptual understanding and educational leadership.

Keywords Peirce Pragmatism Pragmatic maxim
Education
Learning




Practical effects Belief Habit Doubt

Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, or pragmatic principle, is the basis of the philosophical
ideas that he developed over his lifetime. The account offered in this chapter will
draw on a selection of his writing between 1877 and 1906. Rather than map the
development of Peirce’s ideas over this period of time, the aim will be to offer some
clarity about what pragmatism is. Even though the details changed and developed
during this period of time, the overall direction remained the same.
To begin with, in the 1870s, Peirce wrote a series of articles under the general
heading of ‘Illustrations of the Logic of Science’ that appeared in the magazine
Popular Science Monthly. An early discussion of pragmatism appeared in two of
these articles, ‘The Fixation of Belief’ (5:358) and ‘How to Make our Ideas Clear’
(5:388). The former appeared in November 1877 and the latter, 2 months later, in
January 1878. If you are new to the ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce, then reading

© The Author(s) 2016 13

D. Plowright, Charles Sanders Peirce, SpringerBriefs on Key
Thinkers in Education, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7356-0_2
14 2 Introducing Pragmatism

these two articles might be a good start to developing an insight into his philosophy.
Be warned, though: his style of writing makes his ideas very challenging—but
perseverance will be justly rewarded.
In these early articles, we see the outline of Peirce’s thinking and the first
introduction of a number of important ideas in his pragmatism. Many of these ideas
will resonate intuitively with those of current-day educationalists and social and
educational researchers who claim to employ a pragmatic approach to their
inquiries. They will also probably appeal to those who are drawing on pragmatic
ideas in their thinking, but are unaware that the source of those ideas may be the
philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of pragmatism.

The Pragmatic Maxim

Peirce was concerned with how we were able to reach a clear understanding of an
idea or concept. At the time Peirce lived and worked, it was accepted that this
required two considerations: first, the clarity of an idea but also second, its
distinctiveness.
It was believed that a clear idea was one that we were familiar with and so could
recognise it whenever we came across it and not confuse it with any other idea. If an
idea was not clear, then it was obscure. On the other hand, a distinct idea contained
nothing that was not clear, due to its precise definition in abstract terms. So, if an
idea was not distinct, then it was a confused idea.
The task, therefore, was to provide a clear and distinct definition that differen-
tiated that idea from all other ideas. A definition, of course, would be an abstraction
of the general, common characteristics of whatever was being defined. For example,
the Oxford Dictionary of English definition of education is ‘The process of
receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university’
(Soanes and Stevenson 2005, p. 554).
Peirce, however, believed that definitions provided only the start of an under-
standing of an idea. Consequently, he argued that it was time to develop a way or
method of thinking that resulted in a higher degree of clarity in our understanding.
For Peirce, that method was pragmatism. In brief, pragmatism provided a logical
method of thinking and of inquiry that aimed to arrive at the meaning of a concept,
statement or proposition in terms of its practical outcomes or effects. In Peirce’s
words, this pragmatic maxim, or pragmatic principle, invites us to:
Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the
object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our
conception of the object (5:402, italics in original).

Peirce’s pragmatic maxim is not easy to grasp at first reading, which of course is
somewhat ironic given that it first appeared in his article, ‘How to Make Our Ideas
Clear’. However, it is worth bearing in mind that the indelible connection between
action and thought is one of the main identifying characteristics of pragmatism,
The Pragmatic Maxim 15

where action is the practical effect or consequent of thought and ideas. In other
words, and put more simply, our ideas and theories must be founded in experience
and linked to the practicalities of that experience. It is the nature of that link and its
significance for human understanding and knowledge that are the focus and busi-
ness of pragmatism. According to Peirce, this was the only way to make our ideas
clear.
Peirce’s basic principle of linking theory with experience and practical matters
went against the long accepted view that understanding about the world was
derived from knowledge abstracted from systematic, rational thinking. Such
knowledge had two important characteristics: it was independent of the knower and
it ignored the practical impact of that understanding. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim,
however, provided a view of knowledge that challenged a more conventional
perspective of how we come to understand the world, and perhaps more impor-
tantly, the methods we employ to arrive at that understanding. Indeed, pragmatism
grew out of the rejection of the traditional epistemological divide that pitted ra-
tionalism against empiricism, a divide that was based on the duality of mind and
body. These traditional, historical perspectives aimed to identify a means of arriving
at certain, true beliefs that were the foundation of our knowledge and understanding
of the world. For empiricism, this foundational knowledge was the evidence of our
senses; for rationalism, it was logic, mathematics and intuition that addressed the
need for certainty. For Peirce, however, developing knowledge and understanding
of the world started with the pragmatic maxim.
Peirce believed that there were many ideas that scholars and academics had
accepted as being true for well over 200 years. He believed some of this received
wisdom was inaccurate but such ideas had become the basis of our knowledge and
how we came to acquire that knowledge. But he believed these ideas had never
been successfully challenged. In particular, he was scathing of the ideas of
Descartes (1596–1650) and Leibnitz (1646–1716) that were accepted almost
uncritically at the time he lived.
Descartes, from whom ‘I think therefore I am’ originates, believed that our ideas
should be made clear through the process of introspection. But Peirce, in his
characteristically dismissive tone, pointed out that ‘The distinction between an idea
seeming clear and really being so, never occurred to him’ (5:391). Just as critical
about Leibnitz, he gibes that he was a ‘…great and singular genius [who] was as
remarkable for what he failed to see as for what he saw’ (5:392).
It was Leibnitz who argued that we should rely on providing an abstract defi-
nition of every important item to try to clarify our ideas. According to Peirce,
however, this was a major error and, despite its long-established acceptability and
respectability as a credible method in philosophy, did not result in any new
understanding or new knowledge.
Referring to the definition of education above, it is unlikely that defining the
terms in the definition would develop any new understanding about education. This
is especially so when it is discovered that the term instruction is defined as
education.
16 2 Introducing Pragmatism

So, what was Peirce’s argument? He accused Leibnitz of not understanding that
new knowledge or information could only be based on using observational meth-
ods. The part played by our mind was that of transforming that information, not
originating it. His criticism reflected his antipathy to Cartesian epistemological
rationalism that privileged knowledge based on intuition and reason, as opposed to
empirical, sensory experience.
To illustrate his argument, Peirce used the concept of ‘hard’ when applied to
diamond, which is the hardest known natural material and therefore cannot be
scratched by other objects.
Peirce used the idea of ‘force’ as a further argument that the meaning of a term,
proposition or idea lies in understanding its effects. He believed that it was a
self-contradiction to say, as was argued at the time, that we understand the effect of
force but do not understand what force actually is. But for Peirce, when we
understand what effects are associated with force, then we understand what force is.
He pointed that:
The idea that the word force excites in our minds has no other function than to affect our
actions, and these actions can have no reference to force otherwise than through its effects
(5:404).

A definition of the term, as Leibnitz might provide, is a helpful starting point but
it does not enable us to fully understand what force is. It is mainly through
understanding the practical consequents that will enable us to develop a clear and
full understanding of the idea of force.
This can be applied to other concepts, including for example, to the term
‘learning’. Referring again to the dictionary definition, learning is ‘The acquisition
of knowledge or skills through study, experience, or being taught’ (Soanes and
Stevenson 2005, 996). If we were to remain with this definition in order to
understand what learning means, then it would require explaining all the terms used
in the definition, such as for example, ‘acquisition’, ‘knowledge’, ‘skills’ and so on.
This would involve the endless process of one word being defined in terms of others
and those in turn would then require a definition using other terms … ad infinitum.
This is referred to as the regression problem and philosophers look upon this as
being an obstacle to understanding.
The most helpful way of considering what learning is, therefore, would be
through understanding the practical characteristics and consequents of learning.
One way of doing this would be through the use of the phrase ‘for example’. This
would draw on a number of explicit and practical examples that demonstrate what
learning is. It would involve an understanding of the observable characteristics and
their associated effects, when learning had occurred. For example, this might be the
acquisition of a skill such as learning to ride a bicycle or demonstrating knowledge
through writing an essay or persuasively arguing a point.
In addition, Peirce argued that our understanding of a concept is derived from
thinking that draws on the scientific method and is grounded in logical, inferential
reasoning. The aim, according to Peirce, ‘is to find out, from the consideration of
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