PRECIS THREE: PEIRCE CHARLES SANDERS (19TH CENTURY PRAGMATISM)
by
Jeonghyun (Esther) Kwon
Box #1425
A CLASSROOM ASSIGNMENT
Submitted to Dr. James Moore
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the course ES 9750
Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education
at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, Illinois
January, 2016
Peirce Charles Sanders
Biographical Information
Peirce Charles Sanders (1839-1914) was born on September 10,
1839 in Massachusetts. His father, Benjamin Peirce was a mathematician
and astronomer at Harvard, and his mother, Sarah Hunt Mills, was a
daughter of Senator Elijah Hunt Mills. Peirce grew up under his father’s
high view of children’s individuality and with intellectual visitors’ frequent
visit to his home. Benjamin, one of the prominent scientists during the
time, immensely influenced his son’s learning through heuristic teaching.
Graduated from Harvard, Peirce worked for the U.S. Coastal Survery and
Johns Hopkins. His affair with a mistress made him lose his position at
Johns Hopkins. He could not work for Coastal Survey because of the accusations of financial
impropriety. He could no longer deliver a lecture at Harvard because of his potential of
influencing the students with immorality. Peirce died of cancer on April 1914. (The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Historic and Philosophic Context
Peirce was the founder of American pragmatism. Heavily influenced by Peirce, William
James and John Dewey popularized pragmatism (Atkin). Pragmatism is “a philosophy that
encourages us to seek out the processes and do the things that work best to help us achieve
desirable ends (Ozman 2012, 113).” Pragmatism studies ideas, attempts to apply in daily life,
and generates ideas for the changing world (Ozman 2012). Pragmatism has been predominant in
American philosophy for last hundred years (Knight 1989). The Scientific Revolition’s
questioning mind and naturalistic humanism have fostered the development of pragmatism
(Ozman 2012). Pragmatism can be traced in Francis Bacon, John Locke, Jean-Jacque Rousseau,
and Charles Darwin (Ozman 2012). Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey
are the ones who actualized pragmatism. Pragmatism has greatly influenced education through
the progressives’ reconstructionism, futurism, and educational humanism (Knight 1989).
Peirce’s Key Concepts
“How to Make Our Ideas Clear”
“How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Perice’s influential article, was published in Popular
Science Monthly in 1878. In this article, he crystalized his epistemology. He dichotomized mind
(subjective) and material reality (objective), but he argued that objective reality is in one’s idea
about the given object (Ozman 120), as he put it, “Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible
effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere
sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself (Peirce 1878).” According to
this logic, it is important for Peirce to make ideas clear. For Peirce, an unclear idea was an
impediment to the fulfillment of human intelligence, as he says:
“It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning,
lurking in a young man’s head, will sometimes act like an obstruction of inert
matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim
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to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual
plenty. (Peirce 1878)”
Peirce urged people to consider the consequences of an idea in order to make an idea
clear because ideas cannot be separated from human conduct (Ozman 2012). For Peirce, an idea
is awareness to its effects and consequences (Ozman 2012). He said, “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. (Perice 1878)”
“The Fixation of Belief”
Peirce believed that inquiry is the process of fixation of belief. Peirce argued that doubt
triggers this process. Peirce believed that the method of science satisfies human doubts because
the method is untainted by human opinions and will eventually lead to the ultimate Truth, as he
said,
“To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by
which our beliefs may be caused by nothing human, but by some external
permanency—by something upon which our thinking has no effect. … the method
must be such that the ultimate conclusion of every man shall be the same. Such is
the method of science. (Peirce 1877)”
Peirce’s trust in the method of science anchors in realism. He believed that a person can
approach to the ultimate truth through experience and reason:
“There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions
about them; those realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and,
though our sensations are as different as our relations to the objects, yet, by taking
advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things
really are, and any man, if he has sufficient experience and reason enough about it,
will be led to the one true conclusion.” (Peirce 1877)
Peirce underscored that an idea should be tested by experience, as he described, “But let a
man venture into an unfamiliar field, or where his results are not continually checked by
experience, and all history shows that the most masculine intellect will ofttimes lose his
orientation and waste his efforts in directions that bring him no nearer to his goal, or even carry
him entirely astray (Peirce 1877).” Peirce’s emphasis on empiricism has triggered the
burgeoning of pragmatism. John Dewey, once a student of Peirce, later said that Peirce built
more on what Locke argued by presenting that knowledge is not only impressed on a blank tablet
but also formed through interconnection of experiences (Ozman 2012).
Bibliography
Albert Atkin. 2016. “Charles Sanders Peirce.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed January 22.
www.iep.utm.edu.
Chalres S. Peirce. 1877. “The Fixation of Belief.” Popular Science Monthly 12 (November): 1–15.
Charles S. Peirce. 1878. “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” Popular Science Monthly 12 (January): 286–302.
Knight, George R. 1989. Philosophy and Education: An Introduction in Christian Perspective. 2nd ed. Berrien
Springs, Mich: Andrews University Press.
Ozmon, Howard. 2012. Philosophical Foundations of Education. 9th ed. Boston: Pearson.
Phyllis Chiasson. 1999. “Peirce and Philosophy of Education.” Encylopaedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory.
Port Townsend, WA: Peninsula College. http://eepat.net/doku.php?id=peirce_and_philosophy_of_education.
Robert Burch. 2014. “Charles Sanders Peirce.” Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.