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The Charles S. Peirce-Simon Newcomb Correspondence

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The Charles S. Peirce-Simon Newcomb Correspondence The Charles S. Peirce-Simon Newcomb Correspondence Carolyn Eisele Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 101, No. 5. (Oct. 31, 1957), pp. 409-433. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%2819571031%29101%3A5%3C409%3ATCSPNC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society is currently published by American Philosophical Society. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/amps.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Tue Mar 11 07:51:41 2008 THE CHARLES S. PElRCE-SIMON NEWCOMB CORRESPONDENCE CAROLYN EISELE Hunter College CAREFULLYtucked away in the files of the was Peirce's father, the renowned Benjamin. Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress However, while Newcomb the elder moved fre- and in the archives of Widener Library and quently from place to place in Nova Scotia to eke Houghton Library at Harvard University are out a subsistence living, Benjamin Peirce was the two ends of a correspondence that stirs the firmly established in Cambridge as one of the imagination and quickens the pulse of the scien- adornments of the Harvard faculty in the Profes- tist or historian interested in scieritific Americana sorship of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics. of the late nineteenth century. The correspond- Charles was born into comfortable, upper middle ents are two of the greatest intellects ever pro- class surroundings with the silver spoon of the in- duced in America and their exchange of opinion tellectual aristocracy planted firmly in his mouth. regarding matters scientific and personal serves Both boys were avid readers of whatever came as an interesting personalized documentation of to hand. Neither needed much help in the con- the scientific thought of their period. The re- quest of elementary mathematics. Xewcomb nowned astronomer, Simon Newcomb, consid- tells of his state of rapture when he stumbled, at ered the sheaf of letters from Charles S. Peirce the aee of fifteen. on the beauties of Euclid in his important enough to file away with those of grandfather's copq. of the Simpson editi~n.~At other important men in science whom he knew. the age of thirteen, Peirce came upon his Peirce, America's belatedly recognized giant in brother's copy of Whately's Logic and at once logic and philosophy, preserved a number of absorbed the principles set forth in tile text. Xewcomb's letters as well as the drafts of some Newcomb was o.lly thirteen years old when he of his letters to Kewcomb of which we have no was hired out by his father as a manual laborer other record . The correspondence is being pub- to ease the financial strains at home. After lished herein for the first time.' It is not all three years, the boy had the opportunity to ap- continuous although most of it lies in the period prentice himself to a "man of science," a doctor 1889-1894. who turned out to be a quack. Flight from what The fact that the two men were compatriots then proved to be an intolerable bondage brought and contemporaries in science almost year for him to the shelter of this country which his fore- year in a time of unprecedented scientific inquiry bears had left for the deeper wilderness of the and discovery suggests an inevitable personal and north. Bv the time he was nineteen, Newcomb professional contact in the circumscribed society reached kiaryland, and accepted a teaching post of American scientific life in those davs. A in a country school. In 1856 he was employed short sketch of their lives will account for this ex- as a tutor in a family on a plantation whose change of opinion and criticism in their later proximity to Washington at last brought him vears. into a world where men "wrote books" and Although he was born a Canadian in the re- people "knew the Inen who wrote book^."^ The mote town of Wallace, Nova Scotia, Newcomb's hunger for books took him to the Smithsonian heritage was as thoroughly New England as that of Peirce. Xewcomb's father was a teacher. as Reminiscences of an astronomer, by Simon Newcomb, 14, 17, 18. The correspondence was discovered by the writer while An excellent short account of Newcomb's life and work doing research for a book on the activities of Charles S. is found in the Memoirs of the National Academy of Peirce as a historian of science under a grant from the Science 17, 1924, by \i7.W. Campbell. Three additional American Philosophical Society. It is being published papers by R. C. Archibald are of much value: Simon with the permission of the heirs of both men and of the Newcomb (1835-1909). Bibliography of his life and work, Philosophy Department of Harvard University. The Science, n. s. 44 (1147): 871-878, Dec. 22, 1916; an earlier writer is indebted to Dr. Elizabeth McPherson of the Li- version of the foregoing in The Proceedings and Transactions brary of Congress who was first to suggest the possible of the Royai Society of Canada, 1905, 2nd ser., 11 Sect. 111: existence of Peirce materials in the Newcomb Collection in 79 ; biographical note in the Semicentennial history of the the Manuscript Division. American Mathematical Society, 124-139. 410 CAROLYN EISELE [PROC. AMER. PHIL.SOC. Institution where he met Joseph Henry and J. E. comb was marked by mutual respect and esteem. Hilgard. These two men, recognizing the young When Charles boasts in his writings, as he often man's ability, sought to place him at first in the does, of the scientific Clite who regularly visited Coast Survey. But nothing came of their hope. his renowned father at home, Newcomb's name Later their sponsorship led him at the age of is invariably listed among the callers. More- twenty-two "into the world of sweetness and over, a warm friendship seems to have existed light on one frosty morning in January, 1857," between Newcomb and Charles Henry Davis,? when he took his seat as a computer between Benjamin's brother-in-law and Charles' uncle. Joseph Winlock and John Runkle "before a Davis was Superintendent of the Nautical Alma- blazing fire in the office of the 'Nautical Almanac' nac Office and in 1865 became Superintendent of at Cambridge, Mass."4 the Naval Observatory, where Newcomb had The official routine of the Almanac office per- been assigned also as a Professor of Mathematics mitted great flexibility in the arrangement of in the Navy.8 working hours and thus made it possible for In 1870 the United States Government sent a Newcomb to join the Lawrence Scientific School solar eclipse expedition to the Mediterranean "early in '57 for the purpose of studying mathe- under the direction of Benjamin Peirce who took matics under Professor Benjamin Peir~e."~He with him, among others, the two young men. was graduated Bachelor of Science in 1858 and Newcomb was in the party stationed at Gibraltar for the three ensuing years was classified as a while Charles did his observing in Sicily. resident graduate. The friendship between Benjamin Peirce and Charles Peirce, in his youth, had been under Newcomb must have been strengthened by the the personal tutelage of his father, and was pre- overlap in their work in the Nautical Almanac pared by the age of sixteen to enter Harvard Col- Office, for Benjamin had been Consulting Astroll- lege.6 He was graduated without any particular omer to this agency since its organization in 1849. distinction by the College in 1859 and was given Later, in 1875, when Benjamin learned that an assignment as aid in the Coast Survey to Charles would not be considered as a candidate which he was formally appointed in 1861. He, for the post of Director of the Harvard Observa- too, found it possible to do this work and attend tory, he threw his considerable scientific weight classes simultaneously at the Lawrence Scientific to the support of Newcomb for the coveted posi- School. With a specialization in chemistry, tion. He was unable to persuade Newcomb to Peirce was graduated a Bachelor of Science in consider an offer which had been made by Presi- 1863, the first summa cum laude from that in- dent Eliot. Newcomb wanted the Observatory stitution; he had been graduated a Master of post no more than that of the Superintendency Arts from Harvard Universitv the vear before. of the Coast Survey which Sylvester had urged Perhaps the fact that peke ;as four years him to seek after Patterson's resignation in 1881.9 younger than Newcomb and the fact that New- Two years later, on September 15, 1877, New- comb lacked social roots in Cambridgeu accounted comb became head of the Nautical Almanac to a large extent for the surprising lack of evi- Office.
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