Ambrosio, C; Campbell, C; (2017) The Chemistry of Relations: Peirce, Perspicuous Representations, and Experiments with Diagrams. In: Hull, KA and Atkins, RK, (eds.) Peirce on Perception and Reasoning: From Icons to Logic. (pp. 86-106). Routledge: London, UK.

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Abstract

This chapter shows that the combination of mathematical and chemical thinking in particular, as evidenced by Charles Sanders Peirce’s chemical training at Harvard, formed a solid conceptual basis for his account of diagrams. The connection between the Lawrence school and the chemical tradition established by Justus von Liebig in Giessen is of crucial importance to understand the context of Peirce’s own chemistry training. A completely different picture emerges if one pays greater attention to the nature of the chemistry curriculum in Harvard at the time, and in particular to the pedagogical innovations introduced by Peirce’s chemistry teacher, Josiah Parsons Cooke. Historians of science have investigated the rise of institutional scientific laboratories from a range of perspectives. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for further investigation into the role of chemistry in Peirce’s philosophical system more broadly and the potential this new avenue of inquiry might have for the direction of Peirce scholarship.

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