Abstract

This dissertation operates on several levels. First, it is an intellectual history of how C. S. Peirce arrived at some of his discoveries in logic, semiotics, pragmatism, and cosmology through the assimilation and transformation of many of the ideas and problems of traditional Western thought. Second, it places pragmatism in the context of his whole system of thought, which he called "synechism," referring to the continuity that exists between all things. Third, it shows how it was possible for Peirce the scientist to believe in the reality of God. Finally, it highlights hypothesis or abductive reasoning and generalization of experience as the primary means of learning. ;The Introduction gives the context of Peirce's life and times. He was born in 1839, the eighth generation of Peirces in the Boston area. As a polymath, he produced a prodigious number of articles and manuscripts, but his calling in life was in logic. His only full-time job was as a scientist for the Government. He died in 1914. ;Chapter One looks at some of the epistemological traditions which Peirce assimilated: rationalism, empiricism, Kantianism; then shows how he discovered his three basic categories, semiotic logic, and a third form of reasoning: abductive, in addition to deductive and inductive. ;Chapter Two looks at how Peirce developed into both an objective and scholastic realist, and a pragmatist; partly as a means of grounding his logic, and partly to teach others an effective method of inquiry. ;Chapter Three explores how Peirce went on to complete his world-view by incorporating ethics, esthetics, chance, evolution, cosmology, and love. All branches of knowledge are continuous, for Peirce. ;Chapter Four, shows how God concepts are the culmination of Peirce's way of thinking: God, however vague, is the greatest concept we have, the greatest generalization, the ultimate explanation, the Creator of the universe and the love which impels its continuing evolution