The Essential Peirce, Volume 2 (1893–1913): Selected Philosophical Writings

A collection of writings from the twenty-year period when many of Peirce's philosophical papers were written for Open Court's journal, The Monist.Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader's edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce's mature philosophy. During his later years Peirce worked unremittingly to integrate new insights and discoveries into his general system of philosophy and to make his major doctrines fully coherent within that system. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce's evolving theory of signs and its application to his pragmatism. Included are thirty-one pivotal texts, beginning with "Immortality in the Light of Synechism" (in which Peirce proposes synechism—the tendency to regard everything as continuous—as a key advance over materialism, idealism, and dualism) and ending with Peirce's late and unfinished investigations of the relative merits of different kinds of reasoning. Peirce's Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism and selections from A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic are among the texts included. This anthology is required reading for students and scholars wishing to follow Peirce's development through to its conclusion and to appreciate the breadth of learning and wisdom of America's greatest pragmatist. Read more