Arisbe, Milford, Pa.
1903 March 16
My dear William :
I just received your letter this PM. Nothing could be so gratifying to me.
A course on Logic could not be compressed into six lectures. Ample illustrations are needed to make logic understood, illustrations from the history of the sciences & each one in order to exhibit the application of the logic needs to be set forth somewhat at large. Logic is the matter of a liberal education.
I therefore think that the Six Lectures had better be confined to the single object of Pragmatism which, as I understand it, is one of the propositions of logic. Its foundation, definition & limitation, and applications to philosophy, to the sciences, and to the conduct of life will make quite enough for six lectures.
I have little to do to produce the lectures except to abridge greatly MS I already have, —compress it to about one fourth of its bulk. I prefer to have about an uninterrupted week of hard work for each lecture with say ten days counting from today for the first. But if there is great reason for giving them twice a week, I would do that, beginning week after next.
I leave it to you then to announce the subject of the lectures & to fix the dates etc.
My dear William I do not yet thank you. It is always the business arrangements etc that occupy my mind in the first moments & I have only just heard of this thing & I have to send this letter instantly in order to have in catch the morning mail. You are of all my friends the one who illustrates pragmatism in its most needful forms. You are a jewel of pragmatism.
Your loving
C S Peirce
Fin de: "L 224: Letter to William James" (16.03.03). Fuente textual en I. Skrupskelis y E. Berkeley (eds.), The Correspondence of William James (CWJ), Charlottesvile, University of Virginia Press, 2003, XI, pp. 212-213.
Fecha del documento: 29 de agosto 2006
Última actualización: 11 de enero 2011