July 8-12

Tutors: Grant Franks and Mahmoud Jalloh
C. S. Peirce has fittingly been called the American Aristotle and the father of the philosophy known as pragmatism. His intellectual concerns included geophysics, the foundations of logic and probability, the nature of truth, experimental psychology, mechanisms of evolution, infinity, and collective consciousness. We read some of his most influential works at the border of philosophy and science. Our focus is on his methodological (or "logical") writings, which provide a new grounding for natural philosophy in a fundamentally chancy world. We also get introduced briefly to some of his speculative evolutionary metaphysics. No training in mathematics or formal logic is assumed. Those interested in making their ideas clear are welcome.

Text: The Essential Peirce, Volume 1: Selected Philosophical Writings (1867–1893). Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0253207210