A hypothesis is something which looks as if it might be true and were true, and which is capable of verification or refutation by comparison with facts. Charles Sanders Peirce More Quotes by Charles Sanders Peirce More Quotes From Charles Sanders Peirce But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken. Charles Sanders Peirce able taken views The one [the logician] studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other [the mathematician] the science which draws necessary conclusions. Charles Sanders Peirce drawing study science The method of authority will always govern the mass of mankind; and those who wield the various forms of organized force in the state will never be convinced that dangerous reasoning ought not to be suppressed in some way. Charles Sanders Peirce states authority way We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray; and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray. Charles Sanders Peirce praying prayer facts A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody,that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen. Charles Sanders Peirce addresses mind ideas We shall do better to abandon the whole attempt to learn the truthunless we can trust to the human mind's having such a powerof guessing right that before very many hypotheses shall have been tried, intelligent guessing may be expected to lead us to one which will support all tests, leaving the vast majority of possible hypotheses unexamined. Charles Sanders Peirce support intelligent science It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher. Charles Sanders Peirce drinking men science Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason. Now the only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature, and for uniformity in general, is to suppose them results of evolution. Charles Sanders Peirce excellence law want Kepler's discovery would not have been possible without the doctrine of conics. Now contemporaries of Kepler-such penetrating minds as Descartes and Pascal-were abandoning the study of geometry ... because they said it was so UTTERLY USELESS. There was the future of the human race almost trembling in the balance; for had not the geometry of conic sections already been worked out in large measure, and had their opinion that only sciences apparently useful ought to be pursued, the nineteenth century would have had none of those characters which distinguish it from the ancien régime. Charles Sanders Peirce race character science Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize. Charles Sanders Peirce success science thinking One will meet, for example, the virtual assumption that what is relative to thought cannot be real. But why not, exactly? Red is relative to sight, but the fact that this or that is in that relation to vision that we call being red is not itself relative to sight; it is a real fact. Charles Sanders Peirce vision real sight Still, it will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system. Charles Sanders Peirce philosophical men facts We may say that feelings have two kinds of intensity. One is the intensity of the feeling itself, by which loud sounds are distinguished from faint ones, luminous colors from dark ones, highly chromatic colors from almost neutral tints, etc. The other is the intensity of consciousness that lays hold of the feeling, which makes the ticking of a watch actually heard infinitely more vivid than a cannon shot remembered to have been heard a few minutes ago. Charles Sanders Peirce color dark two It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecutionof science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability. Charles Sanders Peirce passion successful science Over against any cognition, there is an unknown but knowable reality; but over against all possible cognition, there is only the self-contradictory. In short, cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms. Charles Sanders Peirce cognition self reality The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge. Charles Sanders Peirce independent community real By an object, I mean anything that we can think, i.e. anything we can talk about. Charles Sanders Peirce objects mean thinking Some think to avoid the influence of metaphysical errors, by paying no attention to metaphysics; but experience shows that these men beyond all others are held in an iron vice of metaphysical theory, because by theories that they have never called in question. Charles Sanders Peirce errors men thinking Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however we may vary the particular circumstances which precede the event. Charles Sanders Peirce fate events may And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life. Charles Sanders Peirce symphony musical intellectual
