The essays in this book have grown out of conversations between the
authors--and their colleagues and students--over the past decade and a
half. Their germinal question concerned the ways in which Charles
Sanders Peirce was and was not both an idealist and a realist. The
dialogue began as an exploration of Peirce's explicit uses of these
ideas and then turned to consider the way in which answers to the
initial question shed light on other dimensions of Peirce's
architectonic.
The essays explore the nature of semiotic interpretation, perception,
and inquiry. Moreover, considering the roles of idealism and realism in
Peirce's thought led to considerations of Peirce's place in the
historical development of pragmatism. The authors find his realism
turning sharply against the nominalistic conceptions of science endorsed
both explicitly and implicitly by his nonpragmatist contemporaries. And
they find his version of pragmatism holding a middle ground between the
thought of John Dewey and that of Josiah Royce. The essays aims to
invite others to consider the import of these central themes of Peircean
thought.