This Public Address publishes a fascinating sketch by philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Trigonometry, algebra, statistics, drawings of faces (the one at the bottom vaguely reminds me of Charles Crumb), retraced figure-eights…the impression I get is one of a man concerned with surfaces, from handwriting to hair.
TPA’s Jeff Ward observes:
Peirce’s realism attempted to embrace both the constructions of the mind and the mind’s interface with reality through perception. It seems notable to me that his semiology did not spring from psychology, but rather informed it.
Which seems exactly right to me. Peirce was far too exacting to allow generalizations about the disposition of the mind to influence a study of what was right out in the open.
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