cover image Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life

Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life

Joseph Brent. Indiana University Press, $35 (388pp) ISBN 978-0-253-31267-9

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), whom Brent considers ``the greatest philosopher the United States has ever seen,'' was an experimental psychologist, mathematical economist, chemist, astronomer and engineer, the inventor of semiotics and the founder of pragmatism. But this genius also lived extravagantly beyond his means, recklessly pursued get-rich-quick schemes and sank into poverty. A well-born Bostonian, Peirce married his mistress Juliette Froissy, who falsely claimed to be a Hapsburg princess, and established a 2000-acre estate in the Delaware River Valley, where he entertained patrons who he hoped would fund his inventions. Impulsive and given to outbursts of rage, he abused Froissy as well as his first wife, Harriet Fay, a feminist educator. In this first full-length biography of Peirce, Brent, a historian at the University of the District of Columbia, presents an extraordinary, inspiring portrait of the largely forgotten Peirce, a progenitor of modern thought who devised a realist metaphysics and attempted to achieve direct knowledge of God by applying the logic of science. Photos. (Jan.)