Strands of System: The Philosophy of Charles Peirce

by Douglas R. Anderson

The American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce, best known as the founder of pragmatism, has been influential not only in the pragmatic tradition but more recently in the philosophy of science and the study of semiotics, or sign theory. Strands of System provides an accessible overview of Peirce's systematic philosophy for those who are beginning to explore his thinking and its import for more recent trends in philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

Other authors publishing under this name are:

Douglas R. Anderson, Ophthalmologist

Reviews

[Abbe Bonnet · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best short books on Pierce. It covers four of his most important essays, but in a uniquely helpful manner: including the essay itself, then a medium length commentary on the essay which sticks closely to the text and doesn’t introduce many non-pertinent topics from the authors own bête noires. Having read much of Pierce’s work prior to this book, including all the included essays, and having attended many Pierce Society conferences, this book impressed me as one of the best ways of entering Pierce’s world as quickly as possible. Pierce is not an easy thinker to get to know since he did not pursue philosophy in a standard academic career. Grappling with his evolving work, in which somethings remain invariant while others develop quite a bit, is a challenging task in which this book can be of much help.

I would give it 5 stars except for some infelicities in the biographical portion of the book.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice, concise intro to Peirce, but also useful and interesting as someone who has already read a bit of his work to weave together the multidirectional aspects of his thought. I have read both articles included in this book (Fixation of Belief and A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God — both in Peirce on signs), but Anderson’s biographical and and philosophical intros as well as his commentary of the articles does a phenomenal job teasing out a better understanding of the text and the latent thinking from the reader. Honestly this might be my new recommendation for people to start with as a Peirce intro because of the convincing systemic “rope” that Anderson is able to weave out of Peirce’s strands. Lives up the the title.