Abstract:
Scholars of the history of philosophy of science read and hear a lot about Duhem, Mach, Poincaré, and the members of the Vienna Circle. C.S. Peirce, however, is not generally considered a canonical figure in the history of philosophy of science. But in the early years of the logical empiricist movement in the United States, Peirce received a warm reception from prominent representatives, proponents, and sympathizers of logical empiricism including Charles Morris, Ernst Nagel, Herbert Feigl, Phillip Frank, and W.V.O. Quine. This reception was short-lived though and Peirce gradually disappeared from the mainstream philosophy of science while logical empiricism turned into a formidable movement.
In this talk, I begin by discussing examples of the early reception of Peirce’s philosophy in the works of Morris, Nagel (and his student Justus Buchler), Feigl, and Frank. I show the variety of topics (including logic, probability theory, theories of truth and meaning, and social dimensions of science) in which Peirce received a warm (though not uncritical) reception. We see that the engagements with his works are persistent from the late 1920s to the 1950s and get more refined over time. I then provide some explanations for the eventual marginalization of Peirce in mainstream philosophy of science.
11 апр 2024
