Charles Sanders Peirce ― Pragmatism: Possibility and Potential

In this proposed book, David Plowright provides an insight into the ideas of one of the world’s greatest philosophers: Charles Sanders Peirce. Although C S Peirce was an accomplished logician, mathematician and philosopher, he is usually associated with two apparently unrelated areas: semiotics and pragmatism. The author explains both of these, and how they are inextricably intertwined, in clear and concise language. Examples are included to illustrate the complex and sophisticated thinking that characterise Peirce’s work. The context to Peirce’s wide-ranging work is discussed, starting with an outline of his difficult life in the highly respectable academic community of New England in the early 1880s, resulting in his ostracism and eventual financial ruin. The author succinctly outlines Peirce’s philosophy, explaining the highly sophisticated system of semiotics. This is followed by an explication of Peirce’s pragmatism – or Pragmaticism, as he preferred to call it, in which concepts, ideas and theories are to be understood by their practical consequences and their effects in the world. The author goes on to describe how Peirce’s ideas have contributed to two important areas within education: the teaching of cultural/ communication studies and the development of a pragmatic epistemology underpinning educational research methodologies. Educationists are now beginning to appreciate the extent of Peirce’s potential contribution to the field of education and the author outlines how Peirce’s ideas have been used to argue for a clearer and better informed understanding of the cognitive and intellectual processes involved in learning and teaching. Finally the proposed book will conclude that Peirce is one of the world’s most creative philosophers and that he should be seen as a key thinker in the field of education.?