[peirce-l] Re: question about century dictionary

[David Lachance]

Joseph, all, There are a number of such statements of Peirce's expressing his dissatisfaction with the Century Dictionary. But Peirce's attitude toward the editors (and other contributors, and the Dictionary itself, etc.) varied widely, from admiration to frustration and contempt; conversely, the attitude of the Century Co. toward Peirce fluctuated. You are right in saying that it should be kept in mind that Peirce worked under special constraints; the thing is that writing for an encyclopedia (the CD was not just a dictionary proper; it was meant to be a state-of-the-art encyclopedia and give a picture of the state of knowledge in almost every field of the day. It is somewhat akin to Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie) necessarily raises the issue of authorship (cf. your discussion of Wikipedia and Digital Universe) because the responsibility of making decisions about the final state of any piece of text was unevenly and irregularly spread over several people (the author, editors, etymologists, other contributors, proofreaders, and so forth). ==========quote Nathan Houser============ Overall Peirce was quite satisfied with the results of his work, even though he would often remark, as he did to Paul Carus on 25 September 1890, "God forbid I should _approve_ of above 1/10 of what I insert." ==========end quote============ The passage you quote from Peirce helps in understanding what Peirce meant  in the seemingly negative judgment that Nathan alludes to, namely, that the  reader of the definitions in the dictionary should bear in mind that Peirce  was under the constraint of being required to give a report on actual usage  of the words he is providing definitions for since the Century is not, after  all, a philosophical dictionary but rather a dictionary primarily dedicated  to reporting popular usage, though it also contains descripitions of  specialized usage, too,  and perhaps even preferred -- i.e. implicitly  recommended --  usage now and then as well.  You go on to say: Well, in a way the CD *was* meant to be a philosophical (and botanical, chemical, astronomical, etc.) dictionary. Its main purpose was to give the reader an idea of the current state of knowledge in all fields. In any case that is certainly how Peirce saw things, and that explains that he was sometimes disappointed. Another point is that the notion of what a dictionary definition should do is not exactly the same today as it was in 1880; hortatory definitions (that is, definitions that tell people how they should use or understand a term or notion, instead of just describing how it is actually used) were sometimes used and many of Peirce's articles are hortatory definitions. The prime example is his definition of "university", which was at first rejected by editors, and finally accepted after he impressed upon them his idea that it was vital that the conception of a university in America change, otherwise there would never be an institution worthy of being called a university in the country. "It appears at the end of the "Reply to the Necessitarians" Monist article. It could induce some rather severe pessimism about any hopes we might have in trusting that Peirce's definitions in the Century Dictionary can be considered to reflect his own views, but I can say he is being overly pessimistic himself in that passage as we find many gems in his CD work, philosophical and otherwise." Everything considered, I don't think it need be read as expressing pessimism  but only as saying something like "Bear in mind what I could and could not  do there."   What had bothered me about the passage Nathan quoted was, of  course, that it seemed that we might be compelled to infer that Peirce  "officially" approved of something which he did not in fact approve of, thus  behaved dishonestly.  But he put such an extraordinary amount of time and  labor in on that dictionary as to make it highly implausible that he did so  in violation of his own intellectual integrity. Yes, but I would rephrase it as "Bear in mind that sometimes I could have things exactly the way I wanted them, sometimes not at all, and oftentimes anywhere in between". And sometimes we know whether Peirce approved, whether he thought that a given article truly reflected his views, sometimes we have to guess. David --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com