The spirit of Charles Peirce

His legacy is alive in Milford

By MORT MALKIN

MILFORD, PA — A conference on the life and work of Charles Peirce, the great American philosopher who lived in Milford for 27 years, was held June 13 under the auspices of the Pike County Historical Society.

Vincent Colapietro, a professor of philosophy at Penn State University and author of a book and several academic papers on Peirce, gave a lecture, followed by a lecture from Mort Malkin, who recounted the many fields of inquiry pursued by Pierce, including mathematics, physics, cartography, semiotic, epistemology and philosophy.

Three of the most fascinating topics of study investigated by Peirce were the four-color map conjecture, the concepts of infinity and continuum (especially relevant today in the field of theoretical physics) and the quirky theory of threes.

Tom Short, a philosophy academic who helped Mort Malkin organize the day, told the audience of the worldwide interest in Peirce’s work and described the Peirce Project: by chronology and category, scholars are establishing order among the extensive number of Peirce’s published papers and innumerable unpublished and often undated manuscripts.

Professor Colapietro’s lecture, “Introducing Peirce to His Neighbors,” addressed the distinctly American school of philosophy called Pragmatism and the philosophic thought of the school’s originator, Charles Peirce. Peirce later renamed it Pragmaticism to indicate its conceptual complexity.

Acknowledging that Peirce’s writings were difficult, Colapietro said that after 20 years of study he was beginning to understand the great philosopher. Here are some highlights from the lecture:

John Dewey called his friend and colleague a philosopher’s philosopher, but noted that, paradoxically, Peirce insisted that philosophy should be derived from the experience of ordinary people, not just manna for academics.

William James, the third member of the trio of American philosophers, noted that Peirce challenged students of his work to think further and perhaps in a different direction. As Peirce explained, his writing “is meant for people who want to find out; people who want philosophy ladled out to them can go to ... philosophical soup shops.”

James characterized his friend as “a hopeless crank, but a really extraordinary intellect.”

Peirce said he was a philosopher who addressed philosophical questions in a scientific spirit. “Philosophy is either a science or balderdash,” he said.

Living in the time of Darwin, Peirce applied the idea of biological change to the hard sciences, which he said undergo an evolution of explorations and thus are part of a living process.

Colapietro succinctly explored the concept of Tychism, as the irregularity and spontaneity of chance events; the idea of continuity that Peirce called Synechism; and the theory of signs (representations and symbols) Peirce called Semiotic.

The lecturer charged the audience with the continual communal inquiry that this great American intellectual figure elucidated.

From the luncheon, the group moved to the Columns Museum to meet curator Lori Strelecki, who painted a word picture of Juliette Peirce. Madame Peirce was of French noble heritage and was entirely devoted to Charles and his work.

After her husband’s death, though her income was meager, Juliette continued to live in their expansive home. She did some fortune telling and is remembered as a colorful but dignified figure in and around Milford.

After a tour of the Peirce room at the Columns, a small group went off to see the Peirce homestead, “Arisbe.”

The day’s events were more than interesting—they were thought provoking, just as Charles Peirce would have wished.

[Mort Malkin, a consulting scholar at the Everhart Museum in Scranton, PA will give a lecture at The Looking Glass Art Gallery in Hawley, PA on Friday, July 9 at 6:30 p.m.

The lecture will present a timeline of man’s development in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East, when farming and animal raising replaced the hunter-gatherer life.]