Charles Sanders Peirce

He has been described as "the most original and versatile of American philosophers and America's greatest logician". Others have gone further and called him "the most original thinker and greatest logician of his time". Even Bertrand Russel called him as "certainly the greatest American thinker ever". Few 19th century American mathematicians are as highly regarded as Charles Sanders Peirce.

Born in 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was the son of a well established Astronomer and Mathematician, Benjamin Peirce. Although he showed fascination in the study of logic from an early age, his academic profile is nothing extraordinary. He received his masters degree from Harvard University in 1863. From 1859 to 1891 he worked various roles of the United States Coast and Geodesic Survey and this exempted him from being involved in the Civil War (he was a rare case: a confederate in Massachusetts). During this time most of his work was on gravimetry (using pendulums to measure earths gravity and different locations). During this time he also became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences. Also during this time, he proposed defining the Meter as a certain number of wavelength of light at a certain frequency. In 1879 he lectured about logic at John Hopkins University, his only academic position. He co-authored several papers at Hopkins, but was fired due to problems with his marriage. From 1887 onwards Peirce suffered from major poverty. He could not heat his house in winter, had to eat stale bread donations from the nearby bakery, and his debts made him a fugitive in New York City. He died impoverished and penniless in 1914 (the year WW1 starts).

Today Peirce is most remembered as the Father of Pragmatism. Pragmatism is the belief that a truth or belief should be valued based on its practical applications (In Peirce's own words "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".) This view of epistemology leans toward realism (pragmatic meaning real). Peirce believes that an idea or conception whose parts are not well understood, and whose effect is unclear, is generally considered bad. Although not formally a philosopher, Peirce also wrote about the validity of the scientific method, and much more.

His mathematical works are also very numerous. He suggested a cardinal system of infinite numbers (different types of infinity). He showed that boolean algebra can be implemented in real life through circuits (years before Claude Shannon). He also did a lot more work on pure mathematics that is too complicated for me to understand.