BOOK NOTES in This Section We Publish Short Descriptive Notices of New Books About Peirce Or Subjects Likely to Interest Our Readers
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PEIRCE PROJECT NEWSLETTER 6 Volume 3, No. 2, Fall 2000 BOOK NOTES In this section we publish short descriptive notices of new books about Peirce or subjects likely to interest our readers. We cannot survey all new publications or prepare critical reviews, so we notice only those books sent by authors and publishers. When available, we reprint notices supplied with the books (often edited and supplemented with text from prefaces or introductions); otherwise we prepare our own brief announcements. Please note: we notice books only if they are sent as review copies to be deposited in the Project library. Prices and ISBNs are given when available. Signs Grow: Semiosis and Life Pro- tive merits of different kinds of reasoning. noticed in a previous issue of the Newslet- cesses Peirce’s Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism ter. As noted then, Elements of Knowledge Floyd Merrell and selections from A Syllabus of Certain is remarkable for serving as an accessible University of Toronto Press, 1996, 356 pp. Topics of Logic are among the texts introduction to pragmatism while also ISBN 0-8020-7142-2 (paper), $24.95 included. There are a few previously serving as an excellent text for courses in unpublished texts and all have been newly reasoning. Now, in the Vanderbilt edition, Signs Grow is the third volume of Mer- edited. Even well-known writings appear Stewart has smoothed out his prose and rell’s trilogy on signs, which began with fresh and in new light in their chronologi- improved the presentation and has suc- Signs Becoming Signs and Semiosis in the cal placement. All selections are intro- ceeded in giving us a superb text for the Postmodern Age. Whereas the first two duced by summary headnotes and there is classroom, whether for logic or general volumes concentrate on the firstness and a general introduction to provide histori- education, yet in a form well adapted for the secondness of the sign respectively, cal background. EP 2 is extensively anno- the general reader. Signs Grow explores the thirdness of the tated, and an electronic companion sign. Elaborating on Peirce’s doctrine of mounted on the Peirce Edition Project’s the man-sign, Merrell argues that after Web site provides additional support for Genealogical Pragmatism: Philosophy, they are “born,” signs begin to grow “in a classroom use. Experience, and Community twisting, turning world of ordered com- John J. Stuhr plexity, of chaotic harmony,” in the course SUNY Press, 1997, xiv + 300 pp. of which they go through puberty, mature, The Logical Status of Diagrams ISBN 0-7914-3558-X (paper), $19.95 survive midlife crises, so as to finally Sun-Joo Shin become senile and fade away. Merrell’s Cambridge University Press, 1994, 197 pp. Stuhr begins his preface with the question book is a strangely fascinating blend of ISBN 0-521-46157-X (cloth), $39.95 “Can a book have a preface?” In other Peircean semiotics and post-modern words, can a book begin before it begins? insights that is intensely stimulating. Shin challenges the all-too-common prej- Moreover, can the start of anything really udice against visualization in the history be a beginning? Isn’t any beginning a of logic and mathematics and provides a reconstruction? In this way, Stuhr intro- The Essential Peirce, Vol. 2 formal foundation for work on natural duces readers to his view that the work of The Peirce Edition Project reasoning in a visual mode. She presents pragmatism is reconstruction: it recon- Indiana University Press, 1998, xxxviii + Venn diagrams as a formal system of rep- structs philosophy, experience, and com- 584 pp. resentation equipped with its own syntax munity. Pragmatism must be critical, ISBN 0-253-33397-0 (cloth), $39.95 and semantics, and specifies rules of addressing future possibilities, but it must ISBN 0-253-21190-5 (paper), $24.95 transformation that make her system also address the past—for the sake of the sound and complete. Shin’s extended sys- future. In looking backward, in presenting This book, which completes the two-vol- tem is based on Peirce’s graphical innova- itself as “the history of the future of phi- ume Essential Peirce, provides the first tions which, according to Shin, “not only losophy,” pragmatism is genealogical. comprehensive anthology of Peirce’s overcame some important defects of Venn Genealogical pragmatism avoids stagna- mature philosophy. During his later years, diagrams but opened the way to a totally tion and irrelevance—“the chewing of Peirce worked unremittingly to integrate new horizon for logical diagrams.” Shin historic cud long ago reduced to woody new insights and discoveries into his gen- concludes with a discussion of the funda- fiber”—by being constantly guided by the eral system of philosophy and to make his mental differences between graphical sys- fully faced present. Guided more by major doctrines fully coherent within that tems and linguistic systems. Dewey than any other pragmatist, Stuhr system. A central focus of this volume is investigates the practical ramifications of Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its a genealogical pragmatism that takes seri- application to his pragmatism. Included Elements of Knowledge: Pragmaticism, ously the notion that the future of philoso- are thirty-one pivotal texts, beginning Logic, and Inquiry phy is to help shape the future. with “Immortality in the Light of Syn- Arthur Franklin Stewart The three parts of Stuhr’s book echism” (in which Peirce proposes syn- Vanderbilt University Press, 1997, 145 pp. explore and evaluate—and extend—the echism—the tendency to regard ISBN 0-826-51303-4 (cloth), $19.95 reconstructive import of the work of the everything as continuous—as a key classical pragmatists for philosophy, advance over materialism, idealism, and This is a revised and expanded version of experience, and community. The fifteen dualism) and ending with Peirce’s late Stewart’s Elements of Knowledge: Prag- essays that make up this book are persua- and unfinished investigations of the rela- maticism and Philosophy of Knowledge, sively written and exhibit fine craftsman- PEIRCE PROJECT NEWSLETTER 7 Volume 3, No. 2, Fall 2000 BOOK NOTES ship. They not only feature the classical Mark Baldwin’s entry for “Logical exercise bike, the telephone kiosk, and the pragmatists, but also include discussions Machine” in his Dictionary of Philosophy bicycle helmet. Vihma makes good use of of the work of many contemporary prag- and Psychology. The issue opens with Irv- Peirce’s distinction between icon, index, matists and philosophers. Chapter 6, ing Anellis’s article on the place of John and symbol. Early electric irons, for “Rorty As Elvis,” is an especially engag- Vincent Atanasoff in the history of com- instance, had to resemble the old models ing discussion of Rorty’s misreading of puter logic and technology. Atanasoff is that worked with coals; steam irons often Dewey. Peirce scholars will be most inter- credited with building the first full-size have pilot lights to indicate they have ested in chapter 11, where Stuhr criticizes electronic digital computer. In his paper reached the right temperature; and irons Peirce’s account of the normative sci- Anellis traces the development of com- generally contain symbols such as the ences. He considers Peirce’s view that the puter logic in both the United States (giv- famous “Made in Germany.” According ideal of conduct is to contribute to reason- ing due attention to the two Peirces) and to Vihma, this triadic division becomes an ableness and attempts to identify some Russia, drawing heavily on original Rus- exceptionally useful tool when compar- practical consequences of this view “for sian sources. ing, for instance, the various steam irons individual and social action.” Stuhr paints that come on the market—a tool far richer Peirce as hopelessly entrenched in a fun- than traditional approaches that seek to damental dualism of theory and practice “Charles Sanders Peirce and the Prin- examine designed objects only within the (and also of means and ends, facts and ciple of Bivalence” context of cultural history, or in terms of values, and logic and inquiry) but draws Robert Edwin Lane social power structures, or according to out some important practical lessons Dissertation, University of Miami, 1998, their ergonomic aspects. nonetheless. Peirceans will want to chal- 261 pp. lenge some of Stuhr’s interpretations, and well they should, but it would be a shame In 1909, Peirce defined the first operators The Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in to lose track of the main thrust of Stuhr’s for three-valued logic, thus rejecting the Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 4 message. This is an important book. principle of bivalence. Lane challenges Michael Shapiro and Michael C. Haley the way commentators have interpreted (eds.) Peirce’s reasons for this move. Lane Berghahn Books, 1999, xi + 637 pp. Catching Up with the Vision, A Supple- rejects in particular the following inter- ISBN 1-57181-732-8 (cloth), $69.95 ment to Isis, Vol. 90 pretations of Peirce’s third value: object- Margaret W. Rossiter (ed.) indeterminate propositions, indetermi- This volume constitutes the proceedings University of Chicago Press, 1999, 359 pp. nate predications, modal propositions, of the International Colloquium on Lan- and lawful generalizations of future guage and Peircean Sign Theory held at This supplement to the journal Isis con- directed subjunctive conditionals. Instead, Duke University in June 1997, and con- tains a selection of essays written in cele- Lane argues, Peirce intended this third tains 22 papers by linguists and philoso- bration of the 75th anniversary of the value to be taken by so-called “boundary phers working together to understand the History of Science Society’s founding. propositions”; that is, propositions which relevance of Peirce’s “semeiotic” to con- The volume includes a paper by Mary predicate of a continuity breach one of the temporary linguistics.