
The American Aristotle - benbreen
https://aeon.co/essays/charles-sanders-peirce-was-americas-greatest-thinker
======
User23
While Peirce, when he is known at all, is usually known as one of the early
philosophical pragmatists, I believe by far his greatest contributions are to
formal reasoning. His discovery of the universal and existential qualifiers
(for which we use his notation), as well as taking de Morgan’s study of
relations to what is essentially its modern form both stand out.

His semiotic is not the postmodernist bullshit (in the sense of Harry
Frankfurt) that is usually denoted by the term. It was a pragmatic attempt to
understand why symbolic reasoning works and the specific mechanics by which
symbols signify their referent mediated by an interpretant. His obsession with
clarity is the exact opposite of postmodernist “semiotics.”

~~~
anongraddebt
Peirce is, sadly, much underrated. His work on abductive logic/explanation is
another rich area for exploration. I actually think it's somewhat unfortunate
that he's labeled merely as an american pragmatist. While true, such a
classification misses the many ways his work outstrips that school of thought
(and outstrips that tradition so much more than Dewey's or James' work, say,
could be said to outstrip american pragmatism).

~~~
User23
And this is largely because his "friend" Simon Newcomb did everything he could
to destroy his reputation[1]. It's fascinating and saddening that a little
piece of nastiness like that has reverberated through the decades.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Newcomb#Peirce_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Newcomb#Peirce_family)

------
UglycupRawky
I have been reading a lot of Peirce lately. His range of knowledge and method
of thought is truly breathtaking. He was obsessed with taxonomy, and it is
almost poetic how he organizes and reorganizes the bodies of scientific
knowledge according to his thought. He was like Adam naming all the animals in
the garden of Eden. Truly the most under appreciated philosopher of our time.

------
dlkf
The author claims that Peirce "surpassed [all other scientists born in the
19th century] in sheer intellectual virtuosity"; then goes on to laud Peirce's
contributions to the towering scientific field of "semiotics."

I'll stick with Einstein, Darwin, and Maxwell, thanks.

