"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.

"This volume is a scholarly collection of massive biographical detail, much of which is being revealed for the first time." Isis

A selection of Fisch s most important articles on these topics is presented here in a convenient format, including revisions and updating and a complete bibliography of Fisch s published writings."

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an American philosopher, physicist, mathematician, and the founder of pragmatism. Despite his importance in the history of philosophy, a unified statement of his thought has been unavailable. With this publication, readers at long last are offered the philosopher's only known, complete, and coherent account of his own work. Originally delivered as the Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, Reasoning and the Logic of Things is the most accessible and thorough introduction to Peirce's mature thought to be found within the compass of a single book. Beginning with an explanation of the nature of philosophy, Peirce proceeds to illustrate his claim that mathematics provides the foundation of our logic and metaphysics. We find here the clearest formulation of an idea present in Peirce's thought since the 1860s, the distinction between three kinds of reasoning: induction, deduction, and retroduction. Then follows an introduction to Peirce's chief logical doctrines, as well as his attempts to provide a classification of the sciences, a theory of categories, and a theory of science. In conclusion, turning from "reasoning" to the "logic of things," Peirce called for an evolutionary cosmology to explain the reality of laws and described the kinds of reasoning he employed in developing this cosmology. At the urging of his friend William James, Peirce made an uncharacteristic effort in these lectures to present his ideas in terms intelligible to a general audience-those without advanced training in logic and philosophy. The introductory materials by Kenneth Ketner and Hilary Putman add to the volume's lucidity. Consequently, this book will be a valuable source for readers outside of the circle of Peirce specialists.