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It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature.

Charles Sanders Peirce

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Charles Sanders Peirce
Age: 74 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 10
Died: 1914
Died: April 19
Geodesist
Linguist
Logician
Mathematician
Philosopher
Pragmatist
Statistician
University Teacher
Phillips Place
Cambridge
Massachusetts
Charles Peirce
Charles S. Peirce
Charles Sanders Santiago Peirce
CSP
Mind
Nature
Tendencies
Truth
Reaching
Certain
Laws
May
Toward
Hypothesis
Ideas
Concerned
Suggest
Ever
Law
Tendency
Human
Hope
Reasoning
Humans
Natural
Agreement

More quotes by Charles Sanders Peirce

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It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation.
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Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus theoretically, is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling only no imagination is mere .
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The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way.
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We cannot begin with complete doubt.
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We should chiefly depend not upon that department of the soul which is most superficial and fallible (our reason), but upon that department that is deep and sure, which is instinct.
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Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.
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The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
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The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief weare inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.
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Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton's time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the beach while the whole ocean lies before us unexplored remains substantially as true as ever, and will do so though we shovel up the pebbles by steam shovels and carry them off in carloads.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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The idea does not belong to the soul it is the soul that belongs to the idea.
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We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.
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It is not knowing, but the love of learning, that characterizes the scientific man.
Charles Sanders Peirce
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Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions.
Charles Sanders Peirce