SOURCE: "The Wasp Leaves the Bottle: Charles Sanders Peirce," in The American Scholar, Vol. 63, Autumn, 1994, pp. 602-606, 608-610, 612-618.

In the following excerpt, Auspitz places Peirce among his list of the world's greatest philosophers, a distinction he credits to Peirce's consistent and rigorous thought.

In 1983, a review of the first two volumes of the new chronological edition of the Peirce papers noted that at Peirce's alma mater, Harvard, his name had appeared in the catalogue of philosophy courses only once in the previous five years, buried in fine print with the usual clutch of "American pragmatiste." During the same period, two courses a year were usually devoted to the work of Wittgenstein, early and late.

In the intervening decade, the canon has changed little with respect to Wittgenstein, who in 1993 shared with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel the distinction of being twice featured in the titles of Harvard...