David LaChance says: Joseph, I can't recall what that message was, but the quote you are looking might be this one, where Peirce says that his CD [i.e. Century Dictionary] definitions
“were necessarily rather vaguely expressed, in order to describe the popular usage of terms, and in some cases were modified by proofreaders or editors; . . . they are hardly such as I should give in a Philosophical Dictionary proper.” No, that wasn't the passage I had in mind, David, but it is directly to the point. The one I had in mind turns out to be in a message I posted myself in which I was quoting something Nathan Houser said in his introduction to Vol. 6 of the new edition, which runs as follows: ==========quote Nathan Houser============ Overall Peirce was quite satisfied with the results of his work, even though he would often remark, as he did to Paul Carus on 25 September 1890, "God forbid I should _approve_ of above 1/10 of what I insert." ==========end quote============ The passage you quote from Peirce helps in understanding what Peirce meant in the seemingly negative judgment that Nathan alludes to, namely, that the reader of the definitions in the dictionary should bear in mind that Peirce was under the constraint of being required to give a report on actual usage of the words he is providing definitions for since the Century is not, after all, a philosophical dictionary but rather a dictionary primarily dedicated to reporting popular usage, though it also contains descripitions of specialized usage, too, and perhaps even preferred -- i.e. implicitly recommended -- usage now and then as well. You go on to say: "It appears at the end of the "Reply to the Necessitarians" Monist article. It could induce some rather severe pessimism about any hopes we might have in trusting that Peirce's definitions in the Century Dictionary can be considered to reflect his own views, but I can say he is being overly pessimistic himself in that passage as we find many gems in his CD work, philosophical and otherwise." Everything considered, I don't think it need be read as expressing pessimism but only as saying something like "Bear in mind what I could and could not do there." What had bothered me about the passage Nathan quoted was, of course, that it seemed that we might be compelled to infer that Peirce "officially" approved of something which he did not in fact approve of, thus behaved dishonestly. But he put such an extraordinary amount of time and labor in on that dictionary as to make it highly implausible that he did so in violation of his own intellectual integrity. Joe Ransdell -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.4/282 - Release Date: 3/15/2006 --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com
