Signs, Pragmatism, and Abduction: The Tragedy, Irony, and Promise of Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce was both one of the leading scientists and one of the leading philosophers of his day. He is widely renowned as the most original philosopher in the history of the United States; certainly, he is among the foremost halfdozen American philosophers by almost any reckoning. His life was nonetheless one of enormous tragedy, largely due to the combination of Peirce's own self-destructive behavior-the sources of which are complex-and the environment in which he lived. Both his life in relation to his work and his work itself are laden with irony. Yet the areas in which Peirce was original remain both important and further promising; it is these aspects that are the principal focus of this review essay. Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life was initially Joseph Brent's UCLA doctoral dissertation in 1960. Through the efforts of Thomas A. Sebeok, Brent's work was published in 1993; this revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1998, reflecting greater access to the Peirce papers at Harvard [all page references are to the book reviewed]. It is a thorough, sympathetic, perceptive, and unvarnished account of Peirce's terribly sad life story and his enormous accomplishment. It is also tantalizing with regard to how much more productive Peirce might have been had he not suffered from illness, drug addiction, and penury-though Brent remarks that some