Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmatism and Education

✍ Scribed by David Plowright (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 109
• Series: SpringerBriefs in Education
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book introduces a number of selected ideas from the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of pragmatism. Peirce, pronounced ‘purse’, was born in America in 1839 and died in 1914. He published little in his own lifetime and he continually struggled to become recognised as a respected author with ideas that were highly creative, original and unique. The book begins with an examination of Peirce’s life history. This is followed by an explanation of pragmatism, which states that an understanding of a concept can only be fully grasped by knowing what its practical effects are. The author then explains a number of Peirce’s ideas that are based on his pragmatic maxim:

· scientific inquiry as a method of investigation and its relevance to everyday thinking

· inferential thinking based on abduction, deduction and induction and its use in educational research

· semiotics, the study of signs and its relevance to the development of conceptual understanding

· his profound and insightful ontological categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness and their application to developing an understanding of the world around us

This introductory text is written in a clear and accessible style. Numerous examples are used throughout the book to illustrate Peirce’s complex and sophisticated ideas

and to show how his thinking can be applied to education.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xvii
The Story of Charles Sanders Peirce....Pages 1-12
Introducing Pragmatism....Pages 13-23
Inquiry and Inferential Thinking....Pages 25-36
Inferential Logic and Inquiry....Pages 37-50
Semiotics: The Theory of Signs....Pages 51-62
Semiotics Continued....Pages 63-73
The Categories....Pages 75-88
Final Words....Pages 89-91
Back Matter....Pages 93-99

✦ Subjects

Educational Philosophy; Philosophy of Education; Semantics