Charles Sanders Peirce was a strikingly original American Philosopher. Peirce began his career as a physicist. His experiments with pendulums contributed to the determination of the density and shape of the earth. He also worked on the measurement of light waves. In his late twenties he undertook a study of formal logic (especially the new mathematical logic of George Boole.) For the next twenty years he lectured on philosophy and logic at Harvard and John's Hopkin's Universities.
Peirce is best known for initiating an original
philosophical system, which is now known as pragmatism. One of
Peirce's earliest assertions of pragmatism is developed in his article,The
Fixation of Belief, which was published in Popular Science
Monthly 12 (November 1877), 1-15.
It is important to recognize that the ideas and issues being probed by the philosophers we will investigate are complex and problematic. The approach we are taking to philosophy in InterQuest is not a matter of learning a list of facts or proceedures. The prime objective is to learn something about ourselves: our beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, values, and defenses. We are using works like The Fixation of Belief because they have significant influence upon culture, but also because they can help open some insights into our own belief systems. Every belief system has automatic defense mechanisms. A fascinating aspect of such defense mechanisms is that they are so clever in hiding themselves from us. Consider your experiences in reading the following article as a counter-move in the project of uncovering some of your hidden beliefs and their defenses.