Charles Sanders Peirce remains one of the enigmatic figures in the history of American science. He made substantial contributions to a number of fields, especially logic, but his use of unusual terminology makes it difficult to appraise much of his work. As the project of publishing his collected writings continues, it may become possible to do justice to this many-sided thinker.

Charles Sanders Peirce was born on September 10, 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father, Benjamin Peirce, was not only a professor of mathematics at Harvard University but also perhaps the most accomplished American mathematician of his generation. Peirce's early education outside the home was at various private schools in Boston and Cambridge, and he showed an interest in puzzles and chess problems. By the age of 13, he had read Archbishop Whately's Elements of Logic, perhaps a hint of the interests to come. Peirce entered Harvard in 1855, and the results...