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. Charles Sanders Peirce More Quotes by Charles Sanders Peirce More Quotes From Charles Sanders Peirce Third, consider the insistency of an idea. The insistency of a past idea with reference to the present is a quantity which is less, the further back that past idea is, and rises to infinity as the past idea is brought up into coincidence with the present. Charles Sanders Peirce infinitypastideas Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth. Charles Sanders Peirce writingbelievereality The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking. Charles Sanders Peirce finalsexercisethinking Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results; their broad universality; their practical infallibility. Charles Sanders Peirce stressperfectmath All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite. Charles Sanders Peirce definitevagueevolution Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere . Charles Sanders Peirce triflingmereimagination A pair of statements may be taken conjunctively or disjunctively; for example, "It lightens and it thunders ," is conjunctive, "It lightens or it thunders" is disjunctive. Each such individual act of connecting a pair of statements is a new monad for the mathematician . Charles Sanders Peirce takenexamplemay It is certain that the only hope of retroductive reasoning ever reaching the truth is that there may be some natural tendency toward an agreement between the ideas which suggest themselves to the human mind and those which are concerned in the laws of nature. Charles Sanders Peirce agreementlawideas To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. 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 excellencelawmind If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust. Charles Sanders Peirce betrayalmendeath It is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones. Charles Sanders Peirce commonsciencefirsts All the greatest achievements of mind have been beyond the power of unaided individuals. Charles Sanders Peirce individualachievementmind The universe ought to be presumed too vast to have any character. Charles Sanders Peirce oughtuniversecharacter Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else. Charles Sanders Peirce struggledoubtwish Mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Charles Sanders Peirce ethicsmathneeds The percept is the reality. It is not in propositional form. But the most immediate judgment concerning it is abstract. It is therefore essentially unlike the reality, although it must be accepted as true to that reality. Its truth consists in the fact that it is impossible to correct it, and in the fact that it only professes to consider one aspect of the percept. Charles Sanders Peirce impossiblerealityfacts Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic. Charles Sanders Peirce foundationsidesfacts I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.But in this water there are countless objects at different depths; and certain influences will give certain kinds of those objects an upward influence which may be intense enough and continue long enough to bring them into the upper visible layer. After the impulse ceases they commence to sink downwards. Charles Sanders Peirce lakeslongthinking When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness . Charles Sanders Peirce mindmaycharacter Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief, which concordance the abstract statement may possess by virtue of the confession of its inaccuracy and one-sidedness, and this confession is an essential ingredient of truth. Charles Sanders Peirce essentialstruthmay
