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PEIRCE_THE_MAN

                                                April 5, 2010

Charles S. Peirce is a rare
philosopher, a guy who actually Knew     Peirce is pronounced
Something... which is to say he knew     "purse" oddly
quite a bit about the state of           enough, which
knowledge of both philosophy and of      complicates but does
science and mathematics in his day --    not obviate our
and his "day" was the mid to late        efforts at punning.    Our purse has
1800s, when these things were really                            been pierced.
starting to jump.                       KNOWS_SOMETHING
                                                                Her pierced lips
    ESSENCE_OF_MAN                                              were met with
                      I_SQUARE                                  pursed lips.

It's easy to be a fan
of Charles S. Peirce...        MENAND_PIERCED

  All of this said, I
  don't have a greatly                The founder of multiple
  positive feeling about              branches of philosophic
  the C.S. Peirce that I'm            thought: pragmatism, semiotics,
  reading.  I don't feel              and what we would now call "the
  like I'm mining a vein              philosophy of science".
  of the pure gold of
  illumination.                       The logician who worked out
                                      fundamental principles commonly
  We read Peirce with                 used in the design of digital
  admiration about how                circuitry (the equivalence of
  far he came, and how                nands and nors).
  early, but not in the
  expectation that we                 The experimentalist who
  will need to modify our             improved the measurement of
  own worldviews once                 the earth's gravity.
  we've grasped Peirce's.
                                           It also doesn't hurt that
       Still, I've                         he was neglected for many
       persisted in trying                 years, and now seems to be
       to refine much less                 undergoing a rediscovery,
       promising ore, so                   as academics try to piece
       why not Peirce?                     his many fragmentary first
                                           drafts into something like
             THE_HIDEOUS_DWARF             a coherent whole.

                                                      (A little obscurity
                                                      does wonders for the
                                                      cool factor.)




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