American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist
1839 CE
to 1914 CE
Charles Sanders Peirce (September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) is an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
He is educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years.
Today he is appreciated largely for his contributions to logic, mathematics, philosophy, scientific methodology, semiotics, and for his founding of pragmatism.
An innovator in mathematics, statistics, philosophy, research methodology, and various sciences, Peirce considers himself, first and foremost, a logician.
He makes major contributions to logic, but logic for him encompasses much of that which is today called epistemology and philosophy of science.
He sees logic as the formal branch of semiotics, of which he is a founder, which foreshadows the debate among logical positivists and proponents of philosophy of language that will dominate twentieth-century Western philosophy.
Additionally, he defines the concept of abductive reasoning, as well as rigorously formulates mathematical induction and deductive reasoning.
As early as 1886 he sees that logical operations can be carried out by electrical switching circuits.
The same idea will be used decades later to produce digital computers.
