HPPLS [volume #:page #] Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Logic of Science, 2 vols., ed. Carolyn Eisele (New York: Mouton, 1985).
ISP # A combined number consisting of the Robin catalogue number and a sequential sheet number. The numbers were Bates-stamped in 1974 on each sheet of an electroprint copy made from The Charles S. Peirce Papers (Cambridge: Harvard University Library, 1966, microfilm, 33 reels including supplement) and kept at the Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism, at Texas Tech University, Lubbock. The ISP numbers give each page a unique identifier and with some exceptions the numbering follows closely the order of the pages on the microfilm. Harvard documents that were not microfilmed, such as those in R 1600 and RL 100, do not have ISP numbers, neither do documents held elsewhere.
NARG [accession #] National Archives Record Group.
NEM [volume #:page #] New Elements of Mathematics, 4 vols. in 5, ed. Carolyn Eisele (The Hague: Mouton, 1976).
O [catalog #] A publication by someone other than Peirce listed in A Comprehensive Bibliography of the Published Works of Charles Sanders Peirce, 2nd edition rev., ed. Kenneth L. Ketner (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1986).
P [catalog #] A Peirce publication listed in A Comprehensive Bibliography.
PWP [page #] Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover, 1955), previously published as The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1940).
R [ISP #] A Harvard manuscript listed in Richard Robin’s Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967). Numbers preceded by RL refer to letters that are listed in the correspondence section of Robin’s catalogue. Numbers preceded by RS are listed in Robin’s “The Peirce Papers: A Supplementary Catalogue” (Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 7 [1971]: 37–57).
RLT [page #] Reasoning and the Logic of Things, ed. K. L. Ketner (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
VUC [page #] Values in a Universe of Chance, ed. Philip P. Wiener (Garden City: Doubleday, 1958). Later published as Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (New York: Dover, 1966).
W [volume #:page #] Writings of Charles S. Peirce (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1982–).
WMS [list #] A Peirce manuscript listed in the Chronological List published in W1–W5.
Introduction
The period from the spring of 1890 into the summer of 1892 was a time of emotional turmoil for Peirce, a time of rash ventures and dashed hopes that would culminate in a transforming experience and a new sense of purpose.1 In the previous decade, Peirce had suffered the loss of his teaching appointment at Johns Hopkins University and the stripping away of his leadership in gravity determinations for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. He and Juliette had left New York for Milford, Pennsylvania, in 1887, hoping to find acceptance in Milford’s thriving French community. By the time he turned fifty, Peirce had been pushed from center stage and his native sense of entitlement had been crushed. When in the spring of 1890 he helped organize a debate in the pages of the New York Times on the soundness of Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary philosophy, he signed his contributions with the pseudonym “Outsider,” reflecting his increasing estrangement from mainstream society.
Diagnosed with tuberculosis, Juliette went abroad in November 1889 to escape the cold northeastern Pennsylvania winter. During most of the winter and spring of 1890, while she convalesced in Cairo and in various Mediterranean port cities, Peirce stayed in New York City where he looked for opportunities to supplement his income. Peirce’s relations with Juliette had never recovered from the blow of his termination from Johns Hopkins in 1884 which had plunged the newly married couple into the first of many financial crises. For a while after their move to Milford things looked up, especially after their finances were augmented with inheritances from the estates of Peirce’s mother and his Aunt Lizzie. Charles and Juliette had been accepted into the high society of Milford, primarily the social circle that revolved around the prominent Pinchot family, and they were determined to live accordingly. By the end of 1889, the Peirces had invested nearly all of their assets in the old John T. Quick homestead, “Wanda Farm” (or “Quicktown”), and in surrounding woodland, altogether amounting to nearly 2000 acres. They had risked everything on the prospect of generating a good income from their new estate, from farming and from harvesting the timber and other natural resources, and perhaps from turning the old Wanda Farm, on the banks of the Delaware River, into a grand resort. This would have been a good plan had a projected bridge been built at Port Jervis to bring through a rail line from New York, but the bridge project failed and the Peirces ran out of reserves too soon to have any chance of success.
After his separation from Johns Hopkins in 1884, Peirce’s principal source of income was the Coast and Geodetic Survey, but he also drew significant supplemental pay for his work on the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia as the contributing editor in charge of definitions in the fields of logic, metaphysics, mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, and weights and measures. But Peirce’s income from the Century Company did not make up for the loss of his salary from Johns Hopkins and, to make matters worse, Peirce was well aware that his position with the Survey was at risk. He therefore tried his best to add to his income. He convinced Wendell Phillips Garrison, the editor of the Nation, to give him more books for review and, during the period covered by this volume, over three dozen reviews or notes by Peirce appeared in the Nation (many duplicated in the New York Evening Post). Garrison paid Peirce well for his contributions and he proved to be a crucial source for supplementing Peirce’s income for several years to come. Peirce tried to form dependable connections of this kind with other periodical publishers (Charles R. Miller, Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times, and L. S. Metcalf, editor of the Forum2) but with little success. Desperate for additional funds, he sought loans from friends and acquaintances and he tried his hand at inventions and various investment schemes, with no luck.3 He was constantly on the lookout for opportunities to market his expertise. He was for instance a regular patron of the Astor Library, New York’s largest reference library (in 1895 it would be consolidated to form the New York Public Library). Sometime in May 1890 he presented the library with a detailed list of missing “works on mathematical subjects” which he thought especially important and he offered to continue his efforts, probably hoping to be a paid consultant.4 His offer was declined; on 4 June 1890, he received a letter from Trustee Thomas M. Markoe thanking him for his “very full & valuable list” but letting him know that he “need give [him]self no further trouble about the matter.”
In May or early June 1890 Juliette arrived back in New York and the Peirces returned to their Pennsylvania home. Their return to Wanda Farm freed Peirce for a time from the daily hustle and allowed him to refocus his priorities. His work for the Coast Survey and the Century Company was the most pressing.
The Century Dictionary, hailed as the “most conspicuous literary monument of the nineteenth century,”5 was not only a dictionary of historical and common English usage but was distinguished by its comprehensive inclusion of scientific terms and was said to embody “the scientific spirit and work” of its time.6 Peirce had been recruited for the dictionary project while still teaching at Johns Hopkins and had begun drafting definitions as early as 1883, but his most intensive and sustained work began around 1888, when he began receiving proofs, and ran at least until the fall of 1891, when the first printing of the dictionary was completed. The first edition ran to 7,046 large quarto pages, included nearly half-a-million definitions for over 215,000 words, and as a measure of its encyclopedic scope