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Publications


“I have six times published my views [about the three kinds of inferences], in 1867, 1869, 1878, 1883, 1892, and 1902. The last of these publications, compared with my present brief abstract, shows that my last week of years has by no means been an idle one.”

Charles S. Peirce, R 842, CP 2.760, 1908

The Peirce Project staff occasionally produces documents, articles, and presentations that reflect on various aspects of our work, report on its progress, extoll its virtues, explain its challenges, discuss its methods and the logic or philosophy that sustain them, ask the scholarship prodding questions, share answers received, draw attention to intriguing oddities in Peirce’s writings, or announce noteworthy events or accomplishments. This area of our website is intended to make them available as occasion allows.

The menu on the left will grow over time. At the moment it consists of a few items:

  • A growing list of primary publications, which was inaugurated with the first and only book in a now discontinued Peirce Project-sponsored series at Indiana University Press: “Selections of the Writings of Charles S. Peirce,” Matthew Moore’s edition of Peirce’s selected writings in the Philosophy of Mathematics. Two other major primary works were added in 2022 and 2023.

  • A slide show titled “1914-2014: One Hundred Years of Editing and Publishing Peirce,” prepared for and presented at the 2014 Peirce Centennial Congress in Lowell, MA. It is followed by supplementary biographical notices.

  • A section called “Presentations,” currently holding a document related to Peirce’s afterlife and two slideshows regarding Peirce’s phaneroscopy and Peirce’s conception of fundamentality.

  • A place where past Peirce Project newsletters are made available. We do not plan to resume production of a newsletter for lack of time and resources. The present website will compensate for it to some extent marked by irregularity.

  • A place for what used to be a significant section of the newsletters, “Book Notices.” Books and dissertations sent to us by the Peirce scholarship will be noticed in that section, in addition to the archive of past notices. Works received are added to the Max Fisch Library of the Institute for American Thought, and are made available for consultation and reading to all library users, especially the many visiting national and international scholars.

“If the concept of publication is understood to include printed items in books and periodicals, public lectures for which written versions may or may not exist, privately printed and circulated brochures and monographs, and papers read before learned societies (with later printed versions or not, with surviving manuscript versions or not)-then a quick survey of Part One of this bibliography will suffice to establish the fact that Peirce published an ENORMOUS amount of material during his lifetime.”

Kenneth L. Ketner, Preface to the Comprehensive Bibliography and Index, 1977

Primary Publications


Los viajes europeos de Charles S. Peirce, 1870–1883


From the back cover:

This volume presents the correspondence that the American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) maintained throughout the five trips he made through Europe between 1870 and 1883. These trips, closely linked to his activity as a scientist at the United States Coast Survey, made it possible for Peirce to come into contact with prominent European researchers and to acquire notable international prestige. The study of these letters, to which until now due attention had not been paid, is of great relevance for a better understanding of Peirce’s biography, and also shows the enormous influence of the European years, of the cosmopolitan period of his life, in the evolution of his thought, and even in the genesis of some of his theories.

Here is a volume (© 2022) that has been in the works for nearly a quarter century. It is the brainchild of Jaime Nubiola and Sara Barrena, in collaboration with librarian and documentalist Jacin Luna (who helped find plenty of documents and illustrations) and Dra. Izaskun Martínez (who developed the remarkable website that has long been the permanent companion toward the production of this book).

The detailed table of contents traces the elaborate and multiform epistolary production, both professional and private, that Peirce maintained across his five European journeys across diverse European countries. Correspondence publication comes with many arduous editorial challenges, including that of their chronological and logical organization. Each of the five trips begins in the volume with a general description of that trip, then continues with Barrena’s translation of all of Peirce’s letters one after the other in chronological order, and ends with an “Otros documentos” section containing letters received by Peirce from the Coast Survey or from his family as well as documents related to Peirce’s activities (reports, articles, photographs of books purchased, and other mementos). All letters had first to be deciphered and typed into English (available on the website) and then translated into Spanish (also on the website with thousands of hyperlinks to myriad illlustrations). The task was herculean and we stand agape at such a remarkable accomplishment. The typesetting of such a complex volume, including illustrations and photographs interspersed throughout, and many hundreds of footnotes, is extremely well done and makes the book a pleasure to leaf through. Peirce’s own drawings and mathematical equations are elegantly and smoothly reproduced as facsimile images throughout the texts.

There are useful complementary discussions at the end: a detailed overview of the places visited by Peirce, and then two essays on Peirce as a scientist and Peirce as a tourist. The selected bibliography and the index of names are two distinct navigation tools that end the book felicitously. The volume is a chef-d’oeuvre of thoughtful and dedicated scholarship. It will long redound to the credit of its editors.

We are extremely grateful to Sara Barrena and Jaime Nubiola for this indispensable and original contribution to Peirce studies. It is available in both eBook (€ 23,99) or hardcover (€ 34.90) at EUNSA (Pamplona, Spain: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S.A., 2022, 714 pages).

Sara Barrena has a PhD in Philosophy and has coordinated the activities of the Peircean Studies Group of the University of Navarra since 1997. She is the author of La belleza en Charles S. Peirce: Origen y alcance de sus ideas estéticas (EUNSA 2015), Charles S. Peirce: Un argumento obvidado en favor de la realidad de Dios, La lógica considerada como semiótica, La razón creativa, Charles S. Peirce: El Pragmatismo y el amor evolutivo y otros ensayos sobre ciencia y religión, and co-author with Jaime Nubiola of Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914): Un pensador para el siglo XXI (EUNSA 2013). Jaime Nubiola is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Navarra, where he has held the academic positions of Secretary General and Vice Rector for International Relations. He is the author of the books El compromiso essencialista de la lógica modal; La renovación pragmatista de la filosofia analítica; El taller de la filosofía; Pensar en libertad, and, with Fernando Zalamea, of Peirce y el mundo hispánico. He was director of the magazine Anuario Filosófico (2003–14). He founded the Peircean Studies Group in Navarre in 1994 to promote the translation and study of Peirce’s work.


The Correspondence of Charles S. Peirce and the Open Court Publishing Company


It was in February 1887 that the Open Court Publishing Company (OCP) began publishing The Open Court, at first a fortnightly magazine (it became a weekly from 1888 to 1896 and then a monthly publication) that was to cover all manner of topics, cultural, intellectual, social, and political. OCP launched the philosophical journal The Monist in the fall of 1890. OCP had been founded by Edward C. Hegeler, a wealthy zinc industrialist based in LaSalle, Illinois. By the end of 1887 Hegeler had hired Paul Carus to become the editor of the Open Court, then also of the Monist, as well of a long line of books. OCP publications were meant to promote monism, a creed shared by Hegeler and Carus, and in particular to reconcile religion with science. Peirce was invited, through the initial mediation of Francis C. Russell, to contribute articles to both the magazine and the journal. Peirce was happy to oblige. Thus began more than two decades of collaboration, full of ups and downs, that saw Peirce publish some of his most significant philosophical and logical writings in both venues. Good fortune managed to preserve nearly the entire exchange of letters between Peirce and OCP protagonists: Carus, Hegeler, Russell, Thomas McCormack, and other staff.

The importance of that correspondence cannot be understated. It certainly matches for instance the letters between Peirce and his savior friend William James. Not only does it shed precious light on all the editorial underpinnings that subtended the production and publication of Peirce’s major metaphysical and logical papers, but it also reveals Peirce’s own complex humanity, at once secure and insecure, cajoling and berating, humble or conceited—a genius often marred by cluelessness.

The full extent of that marvelous correspondence—as rich in philosophical, logical, and semiotic lessons as it is in the discussion of editorial matters, printing strategies, or financial issues—is now available in a large and handsome volume in De Gruyter’s magnificent Peirceana series edited by Francisco Bellucci and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen. This volume of xxxii and 666 pages is a full-blown scholarly edition of a myriad letters that have been beautifully and artfully typeset. Edited with flair and competence by Stetson J. Robinson, the volume wisely presents the correspondence not in one continuous chronological order throughout, but in separate sections by correspondents: Peirce and Carus, Peirce and Hegeler, Peirce and McCormack, Peirce and various OCP staff; Peirce and Russell. Whenever the letters contained enclosures or other materials, the latter are conveniently reproduced in a separate appendix for the sake of clarity. The authors’ corrections (deletions, insertions, and the like) as well as the editor’s corrections (emendations) are listed at the bottom of each page, separately from the editor’s useful explanatory footnotes. Each letter is preceded by the identification of its archival sources. Editorial (historical and genealogical) contextualizations of letters are also provided between rulers whenever needed, along with indications of missing correspondence and what the latter might have been about. The volume ends with a comprehensive biographical register that identifies all the OCP correspondents and all references to proper names. The back matter also includes a thorough bibliography and an index. As to the front matter, it includes an explanation of editorial policies, a chronology of OCP-relevant events from 1890 to 1913, and the editor’s introductory historical discussion about the relationship between Peirce and the Open Court.

We are deeply thankful to Stetson Robinson for this most serviceable contribution to Peirce studies. This book will long serve as a standard reference in Peirce scholarship. The Peirce Project will be referring to it under the acronym CSP-OCP. It is available in both PDF or hardcover for $154.99 at De Gruyter.

From the back cover:

This edition contains the letters exchanged between Charles S. Peirce and the Open Court Publishing Company (OCP) from 1890 to 1913. This correspondence is the basis for much of what is known surrounding Peirce’s publications in The Monist and The Open Court, and highlights the critical role that OCP played in Peirce’s life and career in his final years. This edition sheds light not only on Peirce and OCP, but also on elements that influenced the development of Progressive Era American intellectual history and philosophy.

Stetson J. Robinson is a technical writer, currently at Google, with a passion for Peirce. He received his Ph.D. in editorial studies from Boston University’s Editorial Institute in 2017 for a dissertation that set the foundation for the critical edition of the Peirce–OCP correspondence.


Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings


A joint initiative of Indiana University Press and the Peirce Edition Project, “Selections from the Writings of Charles S. Peirce” was an IUP series of PEP-sponsored books that were seeking to complement the critical edition’s efforts in publishing Peirce. Only one book appeared in that series, which IUP ended following a change in their priorities.

The single book in that series is Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings (xli + 290 pages), by Charles S. Peirce, and edited by Professor Matthew E. Moore (Brooklyn College), well known for his interest in Peirce’s philosophy of mathematics, and especially Peirce’s interactions with Cantor’s works on continuity. This book took many years of careful preparation and deep thinking. The result is truly impressive and should attract considerable attention. It is conceived in the same spirit as the two volumes of The Essential Peirce, to which it constitutes a worthy companion. It begins with a substantial and engaging introduction that discusses both the role mathematics plays in Peirce’s philosophy, and the many lessons Peirce can still teach us today, philosophers and mathematicians alike, through his own approaches, methods, and perspectives, all of which are anchored in an epistemic and metaphysical system that is far from having fallen into obsolescence.

The book continues with twenty-nine selections organized chronologically within six rough groupings (rough because Peirce’s texts escape monocategorization). The majority of selections are excerpts from longer documents, and their lengths vary from very short to not very long. In selections 1-4, Peirce discusses the nature of mathematics as a science and its place in human knowledge, including the classification of sciences; selections 5-10 treat of mathematical ontology and epistemology, including the role of diagrams; selections 11-13 treat of the methods and objects of set (collection) theory; selections 14-15 of arithmetic (its analytical but also experiential nature, and the semiotics of it); selections 16-17 of geometry (topology, and the metaphysics of its entia); and finally selections 18-29—more than a third of the Peirce text—are devoted to all things synechistic: multiangled discussions of continuity, infinites, and infinitesimals make the latter part of the volume a convenient gathering of essential pronouncements from a philosopher who held synechism to be the key to every fundamental hypothesis. Important to mention with much praise is that Moore has prefaced each selection with generous introductory comments that testify to his ingrained helpfulness: all usefully illuminate the selections they introduce, summarizing them, explaining unusual terms, or mapping the texts’ sometimes intricate structure. Thirty-five pages of well-researched notes to the text follow the selections and precede a serviceable bibliography and an index.

We heartily congratulate Matthew Moore on this signal accomplishment and momentous service to Peirce studies. Philosophy of Mathematics is available in both paperback ($29.95 at Indiana University Press) and hardcover ($80.00).

From the back cover:

The philosophy of mathematics plays a vital role in the mature philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. Peirce received rigorous mathematical training from his father and his philosophy carries on in decidedly mathematical and symbolic veins. For Peirce, math was a philosophical tool and many of his most productive ideas rest firmly on the foundation of mathematical principles. This volume collects Peirce’s most important writings on the subject, many appearing in print for the first time. Peirce’s determination to understand matter, the cosmos, and “the grand design” of the universe remain relevant for contemporary students of science, technology, and symbolic logic.

Matthew E. Moore is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Provost for Faculty and Administration at Brooklyn College. He is the editor of New Essays on Peirce’s Mathematical Philosophy.

A Century of Editing Peirce


These slides accompanied a presentation delivered by André De Tienne on the now over 100-year-long effort to organize and edit Peirce’s manuscripts. Additional biographical identifications of some significant figures follow underneath. To move through the slides, move the pointer to the right side of a slide until an arrow shows up and click that arrow (this also works on the left side to backtrack). To magnify a slide for better viewing, click it; to minify it back to normal side, click it again.

Edward C. Moore and Arthur W. Burks published an article titled “Three Notes on the Editing of the Works of Charles S. Peirce” in the winter 1992 issue of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society (pp. 83-106). The first paragraph opened in this way:

“One of the most remarkable features of the Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress held at Harvard University on September 5-10, 1989, was the presence of so many persons who had served, in one way or another, as editors or compilers of the manuscripts of Charles Peirce-persons to whom, it might almost be said, the congress owed its very being. For had Peirce’s papers not been made available through the efforts of editors, the authors of the papers presented at the Congress might never have had access to Peirce’s thought.”

Ed Moore listed twelve editors who were present at Harvard, eight of whom are no longer alive: Charles Hartshorne, Max Fisch, Arthur Burks, Carolyn Eisele, Edward Moore himself, Richard Robin, Christian Kloesel, and Joseph Ransdell.

The slide presentation accessible above pays homage to them as well as to their own many predecessors. For Ed Moore got it exactly right: the 2014 Peirce International Centennial Congress also owed its very being to even more editors or compilers of the manuscripts of Charles Peirce. Indeed we are now a quarter century later, and over the last 25 years the editorial landscape has considerably evolved, bringing with them the same old but also brand-new challenges, already tapped but also many untapped possibilities, the whole set of which was, in their growing complexity, hardly imaginable when the critical edition started back in 1976. Technologies have been evolving over the last decades faster than they ever did in human history, bringing with them steep learning curves, cycles of rapid obsolescence combined with the reinvention or re-adaptation of editorial methods and practices, in a spiraling swirl of ever-revised encoding standards, scholarly expectations, and dissemination schemes.

Some of those challenges are addressed elsewhere on this website. The principal aim of this presentation is first and foremost to express our collective gratitude to all those who gave years and decades of their lives to sorting out Peirce’s papers and attempting to edit and publish them for the sake of preserving and sharing the legacy of a genuine giant in the history of human thinking. The slide show begins at a point in time when the entire editorial history began, one century ago, in July 1914, when Juliette Peirce, grieving the loss of her beloved husband, contacted Josiah Royce (through Joseph Jastrow) and inquired about the possibility of donating the papers and library of Charles Sanders Peirce to Harvard University.


Additional Biographical Identifications

Murray G. MurpheyMurray Griffin Murphey (1928-2018), Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He got his B.A. from Harvard in 1949, studying with C. I. Lewis, Perry Miller, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and a Ph.D. at Yale in American Studies. He spent the second half of the 1950s in New Haven working on his dissertation under the direction of the linguist Rulon Wells. His dissertation became his first book, The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy (1961), whose impact on Peirce scholarship was immense. Murphey had received a two-year appointment at Penn Arts & Sciences as a Rockefeller Fellow, and in 1956 he was appointed as an assistant professor of American Civilization, moving up the ranks to a full professorship in 1966. He served as chair of the department for long periods, and for a time edited the journal of the American Studies Association, American Quarterly. Murphey brought his Department to treat American Civilization as a discipline by applying the concepts of the social sciences to the data of the history of the United States. Murphey wrote several essays and two books in the philosophy of history, Our Knowledge of the Historical Past (1973) and Philosophical Foundations of Historical Knowledge (1994). His vision of history derived from his comprehensive understanding of the trajectory of philosophy in the United States. In 1977 he co-authored, with Elizabeth Flower, the two-volume A History of Philosophy in America. In his retirement he wrote C. I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist (2000) and The Development of Quine’s Philosophy (2011). In early 2018 he published Thorstein Veblen: Economist and Social Theorist.


Vincent TomasVincent Anthony Tomas (1916-1995) [slide #25, “Selected key events of the 1950s”] was William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. Born in Cicero, Ill., he received his B.A. from Knox College in 1936 and his Ph.D. from Brown in 1941 (“The Criticism of Literature,” a dissertation under Curt J. Ducasse). During World War II he served in the European Theater with the 11th Armored Division and earned the Silver Star and service ribbons. Tomas joined the Brown faculty in 1946 where he remained until his retirement in 1980. He also served as a visiting professor at Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, Minnesota and Calgary universities. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in Rome in 1959-60. In 1972 he was selected by the Board of Foreign Scholarships to teach American literature at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. As a founding member of the American civilization program at Brown, Tomas also served as chairman of the philosophy department. He was a member and officer of the American Association of University Professors, the American Philosophical Association, the American Society for Aesthetics, and the American Civil Liberties Union. He authored numerous journal articles on aesthetics including “The Conception of Expression in Art,” “The Problem of Pictorial Meaning,” and “Aesthetic Vision.” Picture at right: 1959, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.


Irwin C. LiebIrwin Chester Lieb (1925–1992) published in 1953 a 55-page softcover pamplet in green paper wraps (or yellow subsequently): Charles S. Peirce’s Letters to Lady Welby (New Haven, CT: Whitlock’s, Inc. for the Graduate Philosophy Club, Yale University). Lieb followed closely the development of Peirce scholarship throughout the 1950s and published a number of related book reviews during that era, including an essential overview of the first volume of Peirce Studies in the review-article “New Studies in the Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce” in The Review of Metaphysics 8.2 (Dec. 1954): 291-320. Lieb became a prominent book reviewer for that journal. Lieb began his university studies at MIT, then left school to become a naval aviator. After his military service, he earned a BA from Princeton in 1947, an MA from Cornell in 1949, and a PhD from Yale in 1953. He left Connecticut to join the philosophy department at the University of Texas at Austin in 1963 and was its chairman from 1968 to 1972. In 1973, he became associate dean of the Graduate School, and from 1975 to 1979 he was vice-president and dean of graduate studies. In 1981, Lieb left the University of Texas to become provost and vice-president (until 1985), as well as University Professor of Philosophy, at the University of Southern California (USC). He made himself famous in 1983 when he and a colleague, Michael Melnick, posing as tourists, traveled to the Soviet Union to deliver invitations on behalf of USC to seven refusenik scientists who had been denied the right to conduct research, use libraries or publish papers after they applied for emigration. Lieb helped persuade Soviet officials to let the scientists accept the teaching positions he and Melnick had arranged at various U.S. universities, including USC. It took several years for all seven to arrive in the United States. Lieb’s writings include two books, The Four Faces of Man: A Philosophical Study of Practice, Reason, Art, and Religion (1971) and Past, Present and Future: A Philosophical Study of Time (1991). Let us remember “An Interview by Irwin C. Lieb: Charles Hartshorne’s Recollections of Editing the Peirce Papers” in TCSPS 6.3-4 (1970): 149–159.


Ivor Grattan-GuinnessIvor Grattan-Guinness (1941-2014) was for many years a contributing editor to the Peirce Project, principally regarding matters of the history of mathematics. Born in Bakewell, Derbyshire, England, he matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, and began studying there in autumn 1959. It was his experience as an undergraduate that turned him into an historian, in reaction to the experience of being taught mathematics as though it was perfect and ahistorical. He graduated with a B.A. with honours in mathematics from the University of Oxford in 1962. He then took a research position in London with Marconi working on the relation between a missile system and a type of target. An excellent pianist and singer, he joined the BBC Choral Society in London, where he met Enid Neville and they were married in early January 1965. In 1964, he accepted a position as a mathematics teacher at Enfield College of Technology. Grattan-Guinness graduated with an M.Sc. in mathematical logic and the philosophy of science in 1966. Having realized that many techniques and definitions in mathematical analysis and in set theory had been stimulated by problems in Fourier series, and equally that no teacher or book on the subject ever mentioned the links, he began undertaking research on Fourier and Cauchy. He registered for doctoral studies in the Department of Mathematics of the London School of Economics with Cyril Offord as a thesis advisor. He was awarded a Ph.D. in 1969 for his thesis The development of the foundations of mathematical analysis from Euler to Riemann, which became his first book the following year, awarded the prestigious 2009 Kenneth O. May Prize and Medal. Many other books followed: (with J. R. Ravetz) Joseph Fourier, 1768-1830 (1972); Dear Russell-Dear Jourdain: a Commentary on Russell’s Logic, Based on His Correspondence with Philip Jourdain (1977); (with H. J. M. Bos, R. Bunn, J. W. Dauben, T. W. Hawkins and K. Moller Pedersen) From the Calculus to Set Theory, 1630-1910: An Introductory History (1980); Psychical Research: A Guide to Its History, Principles & Practices-in celebration of 100 years of the Society for Psychical Research (1982); Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800-1840 (3 volumes) (1990); The Rainbow of Mathematics: A History of the Mathematical Sciences (1997); The Search for Mathematical Roots, 1870-1940: Logics, Set Theories, and the Foundations of Mathematics from Cantor through Russell to Gödel (2000); and Routes of Learning: Highways, Pathways, and Byways in the History of Mathematics (2009).


François LatraverseFrançois Latraverse (1950-2020) founded the Project d’Edition Peirce at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) in 2001. This was the beginning of a remarkable and most significant collaboration with the Peirce Edition Project, the aim of which was the making of W7, the volume intended to represent the results of Peirce’s intense lexicographical work for the Century Dictionary & Cyclopedia. After obtaining two MA’s and two DEA’s in linguistics and philosophy from four distinct universities in Quebec and in France, he earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) in 1983 with a dissertation on pragmatics (turned in 1987 into a book: La pragmatique: histoire et critique [Bruxelles: Mardaga]). He joined the Department of Philosophy at UQÀM in 1978, became Professor of Philosophy in 1988 and, having meanwhile become a specialist of Wittgenstein while also turning his range of interests toward Peirce and semiotics, began directing the Peirce-Wittgenstein Research Group in 1996. An extraordinarily erudite scholar and a champion of humorous irony, Latraverse’s philosophical skills were marked by an incisive capacity for clearsighted and illuminating conceptual distinctions, compellingly articulated within a rhetoric that managed to combine critical distance with empathetic proximity. This was well reflected throughout his many publications, especially those in which he emphasized the logicality of connections others would not have noticed, such as the deeper connections between Peirce’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical arguments.

Presentations


A Spiritual Experiment and a Metaphysical Lesson

Peirce’s new grave

On April 19, 2019, the 105th anniversary of Peirce’s death, members of the Peirce Society gathered in Milford, PA, for a one-day conference. The day began with the solemn inauguration of a new monument in the Milford cemetery, a prominent gravestone designed to bring the old small gravestone to far greater presence. No longer will it be difficult to locate the Peirces’ grave. The most versatile and seminal intellect in US history deserved a better index pointing to the place of his last repose. We may thank the Peirce Society and the Peirce Foundation for having anchored such an index (designed by Céline Poisson).

The day continued with several papers presented by participants at the Hotel Fauchère, and with a visit to Arisbe that was particularly thorough since it included the attic, the basement, and the ruined cellar outside. The day ended with a grand dinner at the hotel’s Delmonico Room, followed by a special and most fitting postprandial entertainment: a seance over the course of which Charles Peirce’s spirit was effectively summoned and asked a series of questions about his current metaphysical condition. The conversation took an unexpected turn, when “Luminous Charles” began teaching an advanced course in post-vital metaphysics.

The transcript of this historical (or post-historical) seance was fortunately recorded with great care. It is made available here in a downloadable PDF. May it spark further discussion regarding a most promising branch of speculative metaphysics. See also its subsequent and unexpected publication in TCSPS 56.2 (2020): 279–290.


The Role and Relevance of Phaneroscopy for Inquiry


These slides accompanied an online presentation delivered (mostly ad-libbed) by André De Tienne during a Zoomed session of the Ph.D. Seminar on “Philosophy as a Method of Thinking Practices” organized by Prof. Rossella Fabbrichesi and Dr. Maria Regina Brioschi (Milan University) on 8 April 2021.

To move through the slides, move the pointer to the right side of a slide until an arrow shows up and click that arrow (this also works on the left side to backtrack). To magnify a slide for better viewing, click it; to minify it back to normal side, click it again.


Peirce’s Conception of What Is “Fundamental” in Philosophy


These slides accompanied a presentation delivered in the Department of Philosophy of Kyoto University, Japan, in 2010 at the invitation of Professor Kunitake Ito. It was based in part on a keynote lecture titled “Peirce’s Conception of Fundamentality,” given at the Twelfth International Meeting on Pragmatism, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil, 9 November 2009.

To move through the slides, move the pointer to the right side of a slide until an arrow shows up and click that arrow (this also works on the left side to backtrack). To magnify a slide for better viewing, click it; to minify it back to normal side, click it again.

Past Newsletters


In 1994 the Peirce Edition Project instituted the Newsletter as a way of keeping in touch with the many people around the world who have an interest in Peirce and our work. The research carried out at the Project often results in discoveries or information that would be of immediate interest to Peirce scholars, and we did not like having to wait for years to announce our findings until the relevant edition of the Writings could be published.

In fact, many of the interesting things we discover would never be included in the critical edition at all. We decided that a newsletter would be a good way to pass on these interesting findings. We also wanted to have a way to let people know when we need help, either for information and ideas, for public endorsement and support, or for financial assistance. The Newsletter showed promise in serving these purposes, but they also took time to prepare, which became increasingly difficult as our staff began to decrease. We decided not to produce newsletters anymore for that reason. We are, however, looking for other ways of keeping our constituencies better informed, thanks to the advent of new social-media solutions, although they are not without shortcomings.

Here are links to those old newsletters.

Newsletter 1.1, March 1994

Newsletter 1.2, June 1994

Newsletter 1.3/4, December 1994

Newsletter 2.1, Summer 1995

Newsletter 2.2, Winter 1995-1996

Newsletter 3.1, Winter 1999

Newsletter 3.2, Fall 2000

Newsletter 4.1, Spring 2001

Book Notices


In this section we publish short descriptive notices of recent books about Peirce or subjects likely to interest our readers. We cannot survey all new publications or prepare critical reviews, so we notice only those books sent by authors and publishers.

When available, we reprint notices supplied with the books (often edited and supplemented with text from prefaces or introductions); otherwise we prepare our own brief announcements. Please note: we notice books only if they are sent as review copies to be deposited in the Project library.

Click the link below to view them.

Book Notices

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