Dear Martin Lefebvre,
since your message/request seems as yet unanswered, here are my two cents:
In CP 6.483 Peirce mentions Professor Papini. To "Papini" there is a
footnote reading:
See "What Pragmatism is Like," The Popular Science Monthly, vol. 71, p.351
(1907).
I cite from CP 6.483:
"About the time Professor Papini discovered to the delight of the
Pragmatist school,
that this doctrine [Pragmatism a la William James as of 1897; Th.R.] was
incapable of
definition, which would certainly seem to distinguish it from every other
doctrine in
whatever branch of science, I was coming to the conclusion that my poor
little maxim
should be called by another name; and accordingly, in April, 1905 I
renamed it
Pragmaticism."
Mmh, the yeardates 1905 and 1907 do not fit together very well or has
Peirce written
the Popular Science Monthly article?
Aah, feeding Google with "papini pragmatism" yields interesting results,
particularly
perhaps http://www.pragmatism.org/companion/pragmatism_wiener.htm
(PRAGMATISM by PHILIP P. WIENER The Dictionary of the History of Ideas:
Studies of
Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons,
1973-74), vol. 3, pp. 551-570.)
In this you find:
"Giovanni Papini, an enthusiastic supporter of a "magical pragmatism," had
been hailed
earlier by James as a leader of the pragmatic writers of articles in
Leonardo, the
philosophical journal founded by Papini in 1903."
Voila. This should be very much to Peirce's taste ;-)
Thomas Riese.
On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 22:01:53 +0100, martin lefebvre
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Listers-,
In "What Pragmatism is", Peirce mentions with disaproval the use of
the term "pragmatism", especially as it had come to circulate in
certain "literary journals" at the turn of the century (see quote
below).
Does anyone on this list know what publications he was refering to?
Thanks in advance
Martin Lefebvre
From CP.5.414
"After awaiting in vain, for a good many years, some particularly
opportune conjuncture of circumstances that might serve to recommend
his notions of the ethics of terminology, the writer has now, at
last, dragged them in over head and shoulders, on an occasion when he
has no specific proposal to offer nor any feeling but satisfaction at
the course usage has run without any canons or resolutions of a
congress. His word "pragmatism" has gained general recognition in a
generalized sense that seems to argue power of growth and vitality.
The famed psychologist, James, first took it up, seeing that his
"radical empiricism" substantially answered to the writer's
definition of pragmatism, albeit with a certain difference in the
point of view. Next, the admirably clear and brilliant thinker, Mr.
Ferdinand C.S. Schiller, casting about for a more attractive name for
the "anthropomorphism" of his Riddle of the Sphinx, lit, in that most
remarkable paper of his on Axioms as Postulates, upon the same
designation "pragmatism," which in its original sense was in generic
agreement with his own doctrine, for which he has since found the
more appropriate specification "humanism," while he still retains
"pragmatism" in a somewhat wider sense. So far all went happily. But
at present, the word begins to be met with occasionally in the
literary journals, where it gets abused in the merciless way that
words have to expect when they fall into literary clutches. Sometimes
the manners of the British have effloresced in scolding at the word
as ill-chosen - ill-chosen, that is, to express some meaning that it
was rather designed to exclude. So then, the writer, finding his
bantling "pragmatism" so promoted, feels that it is time to kiss his
child good-by and relinquish it to its higher destiny; while to serve
the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he begs to
announce the birth of the word "pragmaticism," which is ugly enough
to be safe from kidnappers."
---
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