All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler-such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal-were… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody,that is, creates… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to uselanguage in a Pickwickian… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust,… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. That is to say; before… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
