Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 6. Charles S. Peirce
Peirce would take that opportunity to turn his “Guess” into the six articles known as the “Monist Metaphysical Series.” That would appease his sphinx.
Nathan Houser
1. In writing this introduction, I have depended on the results of Max H. Fisch’s many years of research, contained in his files and data collections at the Peirce Edition Project. To reduce the number of footnotes, I do not give references for items that can be easily located by keeping the following in mind: all references to manuscripts and Peirce family letters, unless otherwise indicated, are to the Peirce Papers in the Houghton Library at Harvard University; correspondence with employees of the Coast Survey is in Record Group 23 in the National Archives.
2. The Fisch Collection at IUPUI contains records of extensive research into Juliette’s origin, primarily conducted by Maurice Auger, Victor Lenzen, and Max H. Fisch, but no final conclusions were drawn. Elisabeth Walther’s Charles Sanders Peirce: Leben und Werk (Agis-Verlag, 1989), Joseph Brents Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (Indiana University Press, 1993; revised ed. 1998), and Kenneth Laine Ketner’s His Glassy Essence (Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), each contain helpful discussions of Juliette’s origin but do not settle the question.
3. See Thomas G. Mannings U.S. Coast Survey vs. Naval Hydrographic Office: A 19th-Century Rivalry in Science and Politics (University of Alabama Press, 1988), especially ch. 4, and his “Peirce, the Coast Survey, and the Politics of Cleveland Democracy,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 11 (1975): 187–94. Also see Brent, ch. 3, and the introduction to W5.
4. See Francis Ellingwood Abbots Organic Scientific Philosophy: Scientific Theism (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1885) and Josiah Royces The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, A Critique of the Bases of Conduct and of Faith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1885). For Peirce’s reviews of these works, see W5: sels. 33,46. For a brief account of Peirce’s work for the Century Dictionary, leading up to 1887, see the Introduction to W5, pp. xliii-xliv. See also W5: sel. 57.
5. For some background remarks on Peirce’s involvement with the scientific assignment of the Greely expedition, see the introduction to W4, p. xxxi.
6. Greely to Thorn, 29 March 87. NARG 23.
7. In his published report (sel. 30), Peirce gave 10 to 15 grams as the probable weight loss, but in a 28 February 1887 letter to Thorn (NARG 23), he estimated that 15 to 20 grams had been lost.
8. Fisch, p. 229.
9. Around 1950, Alonzo Church discovered in Marquand’s papers at Princeton a fairly elaborate circuit diagram for a logic machine, thus establishing that Peirce’s recommendation had been acted on. It is not known whether an electrical logic machine was built. Ken Ketner has argued that Peirce himself drew the wiring diagram, probably in 1887. See Ketner’s article, with Arthur F. Stewart: “The Early History of Computer Design: Charles Sanders Peirce and Marquands Logical Machines,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 45, 1984, pp. 187–211. Alice and Arthur Burks discuss the Marquand diagram in Appendix A of The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasojf Story (University of Michigan Press, 1989), pp. 339–48, and conclude that it marks a significant advance in computing engineering theory—or would have had it become known. Although they do not believe that Peirce drew the elaborate circuit diagram, they do argue that it is plausible to credit Peirce with being the first to have conceived of an electrical general-purpose programmable computer, but they find no clear evidence that Peirce’s or Marquand’s ideas had any influence in the development of electronic computing.
10. Manning (1988), p. 90.
11. Brent, pp. 171–2.
12. B. A. Colonna to George Davidson, 17 December 86. National Archives RG 23.
13. See Brent, p. 185.
14. See Brent, p. 186.
15. From Henry Leonards notes of conversation with Mrs. Robert G. Barkley, Milford resident. Fisch Collection.
16. Brent, p. 187.
17. The Leopold Shakespeare. The Poets Works in Chronological Order, from the Text of Professor Delius (London: Gasser, Petter, & Galpin, 1877).
18. Charles Richet, “La suggestion mentale et le calcul des probability,” Revue Philosophique de la France et de TEtranger 18 (1884): 609–74. See Ian Hackings “Telepathy: Origins of Randomization in Experimental Design,” ISIS 79 (1988): 427–51, for an account of the circumstances giving rise to Phantasms, and the Peirce-Gumey dispute. Many of the details of this paragraph are taken from Hackings article. Also see Stephen E. Braudes “Peirce on the Paranormal,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 34 (1998): 203–24.
19. See Hacking op. cit. and W5:xxv-xxvi.
20. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore were using the British system where a billion equals a U.S. trillion and a trillion equals, in U.S. terms, a billion billions.
21. Abstracts for these thirty-one cases, and others mentioned in selections 16–19, are available on the Electronic Companion for W6 (http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce).
22. Hacking, p. 445.
23. All three papers appeared in The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science: Henry A. Rowland, “On the Relative Wavelengths of the Lines of the Solar Spectrum,” vol. 23: 257–65; Louis Bell, “On the Absolute Wave-length of Light,” vol. 23: 265–82; Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley, “On a Method of making the Wave-length of Sodium Light the actual and practical Standard of Length,” vol. 24: 463–66.
24. The article in Journal fur die reine und angewandte Mathematik—referred to by Peirce as Crelle’s Journal—has not been identified. It is clear, from Risteen’s 4 Aug. 1887 letter, that Peirce had recommended a “demonstration,” probably in an 1887 issue, in connection with the study of curves.
25. Peirce’s landmark 1881 paper, “On the Logic of Number” (W4:299–311) is discussed in the introduction and annotations to W4 (see especially pp. 575–76, annotation 222.24).
26. See Ernst Schröder’s review of Frege’s Begriffsschrifi in Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik 25 (1880): 81–87, 90–94.
27. Peirce must have been referring to James’s “The Perception of Space,” which appeared in Mind, vol. 12, in four parts: I (Jan. 1887, pp. 1–30), II (Apr. 1887, pp. 183–211), III (Jul. 1887, pp. 321–53), and IV (Oct. 1887, pp. 516–48).
28. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 177 (1886): 1–70.
29. Peirce’s “improvements” were presented to the Johns Hopkins Scientific Association and reported in Johns Hopkins University Circulars 1 (1880): 16. Kempes paper, “On the Geographical Problem of the Four Colours,” appeared in American Journal of Mathematics 2 (1879): 193–200.
30. For a treatment of Kempes influence see Roberts (1973), pp. 20–25.
31. “Note to a Memoir on the Theory of Mathematical Form,” Proceedings of the Royal Society 42 (1887), 193–96.
32. Lenzen to Fisch, 11 July 1961. Fisch Collection.
33. See the introduction to W5, pp. xxxix-xlii for a discussion of the influences on Peirce.
34. Fisch, p. 229.
35. A record of this interview is in the Fisch Collection.
36. Ferris Greenslet. The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1946, p. 356.
37. Peirce estimated that he had been responsible for about 16,100 words (RMS 1163:2). For a more complete account see “Peirce’s work for the Century Dictionary” by Jeffrey R. Di Leo and Andre DeTienne, Peirce Project Newsletter 3 (1999): 1–2.
38.