Chance, Love, and Logic: Philosophical Essays

'One of the most original thinkers and system builders of any time, and certainly the greatest philosopher the United States has ever seen' - Joseph Brent, author of "Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life". 'Peirce's achievements would take a short book to describe adequately. In philosophy, he founded the most distinctively American school of thought - Pragmatism. As the founder of pragmatism, he was the intellectual hero of both John Dewey and William James. He also created single-handedly the large discipline called Semeiotic - the study of the working of signs - a discipline which engages scholars all over the world. He was perhaps the first modern Historian of Science, and he was certainly one of the great founders of Mathematical Logic. He was, in truth, one of the rare thinkers who deserves the overworked title of 'genius' - Hilary Putnam, author of "Pragmatism: An Open Question".'Most people never heard of him, but they will' - Walker Percy. "Chance, Love, and Logic" contains two books by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) which are among his most important and widely influential. The first is "Illustrations of the Logic of Science". The opening chapters, 'The Fixation of Belief' and 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear', mark the beginning of pragmatism. The second presents Peirce's innovative and influential essays on scientific metaphysics. Morris Raphael Cohen is the author of "Law and the Social Order" and "Reason and Nature". Kenneth Laine Ketner is Charles Sanders Peirce Professor of Philosophy at Texas Tech University and the author of "His Glassy Essence".