"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.

查爾斯·S.皮爾士（Charles Sanders Peirce，1839—1914），美國著名的哲學傢、科學傢，現代邏輯學奠基者之一，實用主義創始人。皮爾士生於美國的馬薩諸塞州坎布裏奇，曾就讀於哈佛大學，並作為一名科學傢在美國海洋和大地測量觀察所任職30年。在哲學方麵，皮爾士開創瞭實用主義哲學理論，把觀念的意義和實際的效果相聯，斷言“一個觀念的定義是該觀念的可感覺的效果”；在邏輯學方麵，皮爾士改進瞭希爾代數，又發展瞭關係邏輯，即引入新的概念和符號，把關係邏輯組成關係演算；在自然科學方麵，皮爾士先於A.A.邁剋爾遜以光波波長作為測量單位。雖然皮爾士生前岌岌無名，但是他在科學、哲學、邏輯學諸多領域的卓越貢獻與深遠影響使其被後世人譽為“美國眾多哲學思想的源頭”和“偉大的思想先驅之一”。