"One of the most original thinkers and system builders of any time, and certainly the greatest philosopher the United States has ever seen."--Joseph Brent, author of Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life. "Peirce's achievements would take a short book to describe adequately. In philosophy, he founded the most distinctively American school of thought--Pragmatism. As the founder of pragmatism, he was the intellectual hero of both John Dewey and William James. He also created single-handedly the large discipline called Semeiotic--the study of the working of signs--a discipline which engages scholars all over the world. He was perhaps the first modern Historian of Science, and he was certainly one of the great founders of Mathematical Logic. He was, in truth, one of the rare thinkers who deserves the overworked title of 'genius.'"--Hilary Putnam, author of Pragmatism: An Open Question. "Most people never heard of him, but they will."--Walker Percy. Chance, Love, and Logic contains two books by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) which are among his most important and widely influential. The first is Illustrations of the Logic of Science. The opening chapters, "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," mark the beginning of pragmatism. The second presents Peirce's innovative and influential essays on scientific metaphysics. Morris Raphael Cohen is the author of Law and the Social Order and Reason and Nature. Kenneth Laine Ketner is Charles Sanders Peirce Professor of Philosophy at Texas Tech University and the author of His Glassy Essence.

查尔斯·S.皮尔士（Charles Sanders Peirce，1839—1914），美国著名的哲学家、科学家，现代逻辑学奠基者之一，实用主义创始人。皮尔士生于美国的马萨诸塞州坎布里奇，曾就读于哈佛大学，并作为一名科学家在美国海洋和大地测量观察所任职30年。在哲学方面，皮尔士开创了实用主义哲学理论，把观念的意义和实际的效果相联，断言“一个观念的定义是该观念的可感觉的效果”；在逻辑学方面，皮尔士改进了希尔代数，又发展了关系逻辑，即引入新的概念和符号，把关系逻辑组成关系演算；在自然科学方面，皮尔士先于A.A.迈克尔逊以光波波长作为测量单位。虽然皮尔士生前岌岌无名，但是他在科学、哲学、逻辑学诸多领域的卓越贡献与深远影响使其被后世人誉为“美国众多哲学思想的源头”和“伟大的思想先驱之一”。