The American Aristotle

Celebrating him sure. Calling him anything that captures the nation's identity is a little rich... given the US's history of squashing many people's accomplishments due to their race/gender/religion.

Very good article summarising some achievements of Charles S. Peirce. This is impressive:

> The importance and range of Peirce’s contributions to science, mathematics and philosophy can be appreciated partially by recognising that many of the most important advances in philosophy and science over the past 150 years originated with Peirce: the development of mathematical logic (before and arguably better eventually than Gottlob Frege); the development of semiotics (before and arguably better than Ferdinand de Saussure); the philosophical school of pragmatism (before and arguably better than William James); the modern development of phenomenology (independently of and arguably superior to Edmund Husserl); and the invention of universal grammar with the property of recursion (before and arguably better than Noam Chomsky...).

> Beyond these philosophical contributions, Peirce also made fundamental discoveries in science and mathematics. A few of these are: the shape of the Milky Way galaxy; the first precise measurement of the Earth’s gravity and circumference; one of the most accurate and versatile projections of the 3D globe of the Earth onto 2D space; the chemistry of relations and working out the consequences of the discovery of the electron for the periodic table; the axiomisation of the law of the excluded middle, or Peirce’s Law: ((P→Q)→P)→P); existential graphs and the transformation of mathematics into an (quasi-)empirical component of studies on cognition; one of the first studies of the stellar spectra, particularly the spectral properties of argon; the invention of the then most accurate gravimetric pendulum; the first standardisation of the length of the metre by anchoring it to the length of a wavelength of light (which he figured out via his own experiments in multiple stations around Europe and North America).

I wanted to share a classic dialogue put together by Susan Haack, "We Pragmatists..." Peirce and Rorty in Conversation—using only the philosophers' actual words—contrasting Peirce's pragmatism with Rorty's of ~100 years later. It's like night and day, with Peirce = day! It gives a very good sense of how they talked and their wide differences. And it's very funny.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312041697_We_Pragma...

As HN’s self-described #1 Peirce fan, the second I saw the title I knew who this was about. The reason most of us have never heard of Peirce was the unflagging devotion of his childhood “friend” Simon Newcomb to utterly destroying his legacy out of envy and spite.

Not only was Peirce a genius logician who discovered the universal and existential quantifiers independent of Frege, he also formalized pragmatism and semiotic.

Edit: Oh and I forgot abductive reasoning[1], which is shockingly unknown given its utility. I first learned of it from an absurdly smart Raytheon physicist many years ago.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning

Also a white supremacist. Not a good looks there Charlie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce#Slavery...

The syllogism is too much.

> Consider a Stop sign. It is a red octagon on a post with the letters ‘S-T-O-P’ printed on it.

This is probably why he isn't very well known.

It's this kind of crap which gives philosophy a bad name.