Jaime Nubiola

This contribution describes—with some documentary support from Peirce’s correspondence of his first and second European trips—Peirce’s conception of science as a collective and co-operative activity of all those whose lives are animated by the desire to find out the truth, whose lives are animated by “an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things.” The paper has two sections: first, Peirce as an inventor and builder of research instruments around which scientific communities are formed, and, second, Peirce’s own experience of cooperation within science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Cosmopolitan Peirce:The Impact of His European ExperienceJaime Nubiola, Guest EditorKeywordsCharles S. Peirce, Europe, ScienceThe common image of Charles Sanders Peirce as an isolated thinker writing in Arisbe without any contact with the world is not only historically inaccurate, but also makes it difficult to understand some key elements of his philosophy. Charles S. Peirce traveled to Europe on five different occasions. The five trips occurred between the years 1870 and 1883, all of them in the service of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, at that time the chief scientific agency of the United States. Those trips—which covered a total of thirty-eight months—were a rich mixture of scientific research and tourism, of communication with other scientists and also of enjoying the artistic treasures of Europe. The impact of this extensive travelling was so relevant in Peirce’s life and thought that it makes perfect sense to identify this period of time as his “cosmopolitan period”—to use Max Fisch’s expression (Fisch 1986, 227).Peirce’s experiences of his European trips are lively reflected in his broad correspondence (professional and family letters), which until now has been unduly neglected by the scholarship, due in part to the difficulties accompanying access to it and in part to the general lack of interest from the analytic tradition in the biographical aspects of philosophy. We are convinced that the feelings that Peirce experienced in Europe were seeds which bore fruit in later years. A close study of Peirce’s letters and other documents of those years will help in avoiding a number of misunderstandings about his thought and its evolution by highlighting his active participation in the first line of several fields of cooperative scientific research (astronomy, geodesy, etc.). [End Page 425]In this issue we collect three papers presented at the 2014 Charles S. Peirce International Centennial Congress, authored respectively by Nathan Houser, Sara Barrena and myself. The first paper, written by Nathan Houser, describes how Peirce’s European experiences influenced the development of his thought and helped shape his philosophy. It appears likely that his thought was decidedly influenced by his intellectual and personal contact with European scientists and philosophers. So to understand Peirce as an American philosopher it is necessary to grasp that he was profoundly influenced by European thought and culture and to inquire how his American and European experiences worked together to form his ideas and shape him into the world-renowned philosopher he became.Sara Barrena’s paper focuses on Peirce’s aesthetics. While Peirce claims to not be well acquainted with aesthetics, he always was interested in that field. In spite of the fact that Peirce did not develop the issue in depth, aesthetics is at the foundation of the other normative sciences. Barrena suggests that the trips through Europe and the contemplation of so many works of art and of historic places left in his memory impressions that are at the basis of the importance that Peirce would assign to art and aesthetics in his later years.The final paper, by Jaime Nubiola, describes—with documental support from Peirce’s correspondence from his first and second European trips—Peirce’s conception of science as a collective and cosoperative activity of people whose lives are animated by the desire to find out the truth and by “an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things” (CP 1.44, c.1896). The paper deals with Peirce as an inventor and builder of research instruments around which scientific communities are built, and with Peirce’s own experience of cooperation in science.In sum, a close study of Peirce’s letters and other documents of his “cosmopolitan period” will help avoid certain misunderstandings about his thought and its evolution, highlighting his active participation in the first line of several fields of cooperative scientific research (astronomy, geodesy, etc.). A better understanding of Peirce’s activity in those years will provide a richer and more sympathetic approach to him, and correct that all too common but inaccurate image of Peirce as an isolated thinker.Jaime Nubiola, Guest EditorUniversidad de Navarra [email protected], Charles S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders...

La consideración de la verdad como objeto de la búsqueda científica y vital es posiblemente la manera más adecuada para comprender la tradición pragmatista. Frente al diagnóstico postmoderno de Rorty que aboga por la disolución de la filosofía en la literatura, en la conversación general de la humanidad y frente al fundacionalismo cientista de los herederos del Círculo de Viena en este trabajo se defiende un camino intermedio, con pretensiones más modestas, pero que por estar anclado en la experiencia personal de cada uno y en la experiencia colectiva de la especie humana, afronta mejor el reto de dar razón del progreso histórico de la verdad, el reto de comprender el sentido del crecimiento de los saberes y el proceso de generación de nuevos conocimientos. Se trata de la tradición pragmatista que hunde sus raíces en el pensamiento de Charles S. Peirce, cobra vigor en nuestro siglo con las reflexiones de Ludwig Wittgenstein y adquiere su mayor desarrollo en autores contemporáneos como Hilary Putnam y Susan Haack.The consideration of the truth as object of the scientific and vital search is possibly the most adequate way to understand the pragmatist tradition. As opposed to the Rorty's postmodern diagnosis that pleads for the dissolution of the philosophy in the literature or in the general conversation of the humanity; as opposed to the scientist foundation of the inheritors of the Circle of Vienna, in this work an intermediate way with more modest pretensions is presented. Being anchored in the personal experience and in the collective experience of the human, it faced better the challenge of giving reason to the historical progress of the truth and the challenge of understanding the sense of the growth and the generation process of new knowledge. The pragmatist tradition which sinks its roots in Charles's S. Peirce's thought, increases vigor in our century with Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections and acquires its major development in contemporary authors such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack.

Something surprising about Charles S. Peirce scholarship throughout the years has been the scarce attention paid to the religious dimensions of Peirce's thought. The aim of this paper is to highlight that for Peirce the belief in God is not only a natural product of abduction, of the "rational instinct" or from the educated guess of the scientist or the lay man, but also that the abduction of God is for him the “proof” of pragmatism. Not only the belief in God is able to change the behavior of the believer, but according to Peirce —in "A Neglected Argument of the Reality of God" and other places— the reality of God gives meaning to the whole scientific enterprise.