To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way… — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share
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
Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature,… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
... and it is probably that there is some secret here which remains to be discovered. — Charles Sanders Peirce Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
