PEIRCE, CHARLES SANDERS

(1839-1914) government service; father of Pragmatism. Wrote 1. Collected Papers and 2. Perfection . He also edited several religious magazines. The pragmatic method is interpreted more nearly as the scientific method. Knowledge is more social in nature, and verification more public in emphasis, than in William James . Theory of knowledge turns on semiotic or theory of signs and is realistic. Knowledge can never attain complete verification or absolute certainty; this is the principle of fallibilism . Reality is a many-sided pluralistic process realizing limited actualities but possessing unlimited possibilities. Matter is directly apprehended through sensation as a "brutal fact." The only legitimate metaphysics is empirical or phenomenological and seeks to identify three universal and pervasive aspects of all phenomena : quality, fact, and law. Peirce labels these as categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness.