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).
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. 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 |
- [peirce-l] question about century dictionary Joseph Ransdell
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