In 1891, Peirce received a small legacy, retired from his job with the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey, and moved to Milford, Pennsylvania, where he lived a reclu-
sive life while writing on philosophical themes. His works received virtually no
recognition during his lifetime, and on his death his second wife sold all his papers
to Harvard for $500.
***
Peirce has been called a “philosopher’s philosopher.” His writings are often diffi-
cult for beginning students, partly because of the technical way in which he
expresses his ideas. In addition, he developed four more-or-less complete systems,
abandoning each in favor of the next. Despite his esoteric and variegated writing,
in 1877 and 1878 Peirce published a pair of essays for a general audience in
Popular Science Monthly.These became his most important works.
The first of these essays, “The Fixation of Belief,” is given here (complete).
This essay develops Peirce’s famous theory of pragmatism. Peirce begins with a
brief history of knowledge, concluding that all inquiry begins with doubt. In order
to lead to belief, this doubt must be “real and living,” the actual state in which we
find ourselves. This state of doubt causes us to “struggle to attain a state of
belief,” which we then try to “fix” in some way.
Peirce explains four methods of moving from doubt to belief: (1) tenacity,
accepting one alternative to the doubt and rejecting all possible criticism of it;
(2) authority, submitting to the state’s or the church’s tenaciously held beliefs;
(3) the a priorimethod, relying on the inclination to believe; and (4) science.
Peirce argues for the scientific method because “it is the only one of the four
methods which presents any distinction of a right and a wrong way.”
Peirce has been called the father of pragmatism, and his work clearly influenced
William James and John Dewey. Apart from the pragmatists, echoes of Peirce’s
writing can be heard in the verification criterion of meaning of the logical positivists
and in the mandate of the later Wittgenstein that “the meaning is the use.” Since the
publication of his collected essays in the middle of the century, there has been
renewed interest in Peirce’s thought.
For general works on pragmatism (which include sections on Peirce and which
place his thought in a wider context), see Edward C. Moore, American
Pragmatism: Peirce, James and Dewey(New York: Columbia University Press,
1961); H.S. Thayer, “Pragmatism,” in D.J. O’Connor, ed.,A Critical History of
Western Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1964); Amelie O. Rorty, ed.,
Pragmatic Philosophy (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1966); Frederick
Copleston,A History of Philosophy,Vol. VIII (Garden City, NY: Anchor
Doubleday, 1967); A.J. Ayer,The Origins of Pragmatism: Studies in the
Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and William James (San Francisco:
Freeman, Cooper, 1968); H.S. Thayer,Meaning and Action: A Critical History of
Pragmatism (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968); Charles Moore,The
Pragmatic Movement in America (New York: George Braziller, 1970); Israel
Scheffler,Four Pragmatists: A Critical Introduction to Peirce, James, Mead, and
Dewey (New York: Humanities Press, 1974); John E. Smith,Purpose and
Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
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