Wikipedia credits C.S. Peirce as being one of the founders of statistics and specifically calls out the “Illustrations of the Logic of Science” essays. “The Probability of Induction,” published April 1878, shows Peirce groping toward the idea of confidence intervals (a term he would later coin, but hasn’t yet). He also defends Venn’s frequentist interpretation of probability by showing that the dominant subjectivist interpretation and methods lead to absurdity.

Because Peirce and others were still formulating both the terminology and conceptual underpinnings of frequentist statistics, the essay benefits (I hope) from my cover band approach. In my version, I’ll drop some of the digressions that Peirce is so overly fond of. (Let’s just say that, in general, my covers will omit Peirce’s drum solos.)

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“The Doctrine of Chances,” published March 1878, is the third installment of C.S. Peirce’s essay series “Illustrations of the Logic of Science.” It describes how to overlay probability on top of logic, and has early thoughts about continuity (in roughly the mathematical sense) and the social character of logic. It also gives hints of his later big theories of absolute chance (tychism), evolutionary cosmology, and the continuum (synechism).

Generally, I try to follow Peirce’s original structure when making these cover versions, but this one is rather a mess (possibly because it was originally one essay edited into two). So I’ve reorganized it.

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This is a rewriting of C.S. Peirce’s earlyish essay “How to Make our Ideas Clear,” published January 1878 in Popular Science Monthly. It’s the second of a series of six essays, collectively titled “Illustrations of the Logic of Science.” It introduces the semi-famous “pragmatic maxim” and the idea that truth is the limit (in something like the mathematical sense) of scientific-ish inquiry. Although it’s perhaps Peirce’s most famous text, it’s kind of a mess.

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This is a rewriting of C.S. Peirce’s earlyish essay “The Fixation of Belief,” published November 1877 in Popular Science Monthly. It’s the first of a series of six essays, collectively titled “Illustrations of the Logic of Science.” It’s presumably written for a lay audience, so is simpler than his specialist papers, but I think it still benefits from a cover version. A what? About these covers. TL;DR Belief produces habit. Habit is a rote reaction to particular circumstances.

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C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) was an American scientist, philosopher, and polymath who did foundational or important work in scientific and philosophy-adjacent fields like formal logic, experimental statistics, semiotics, scientific method, and metaphysics. I think his philosophical ideas are, at the very least, interesting. Some are novel, even today. I think them frequently useful for getting around in the world (especially for those of a scientific bent). However, his writing is difficult for a modern audience.

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I changed my Mastodon profile picture to a Canadian flag today. That may not seem like much to you, but it means a lot to me. Let me explain.

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C.S. Peirce (1839-1914) was a logician, scientist, mathematician, and philosopher who was relatively unknown and under-published until well after he died. (But Bertrand Russell later wrote “he was one of the most original minds of the later nineteenth century and certainly the greatest American thinker ever.")

Peirce (pronounced “purse”) is most known for inventing philosophical pragmatism and its “pragmatic maxim.”

Because the pragmatic maxim is, I think, a heuristic more people should apply, I’ve decided to explain it by way of three anecdotes.

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The title plays on “Last Song About Satan” by Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, a country-rock band credited as a founder of the “gothic country” genre (“a genre of country music rooted in early jazz, gospel, Americana, gothic rock, and post-punk.")

I don’t think of Popper or the critical rationalists as satanic, but I do resonate with the theme of the song as captured here:

Well, I must’ve gone back in time
About the time after Jesus died
He was down there preaching in that hole
To all us dark and lonely souls
And He said “Son, why are you here?
You should be back home drinking beer
Writing songs about God and glory
Don’t use the Devil in your story”

[Chorus]
Well, this is my last song about Satan
No more songs about evil or filth or bile and booze
No more songs about my hell, I’ve nothing left to prove

I could say more about reasons why critical rationalism is a bad methodology of science – you should see my notes – but any remaining readers (hi!) are either convinced or not.

So I’ll finish with three narratives of discovery: C.S. Peirce’s account of Kepler’s discovery of his three laws of planetary motion, Imre Lakatos’s account of Newton’s theory of gravitation, and Andrew Pickering’s story of Hamilton’s discovery of quaternions. I’ll (mostly) just let the richness and… plausibility of the first and third accounts contrast with the narrowness of the second, and (mostly) just let you sit with the question of which of the three narrators seems more likely to have insight into my original question: why does science work so well?

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I made a mistake in the previous post. However, in true pundit style, I claim the correction just reinforces what I’ve been saying all along. (What’re the odds?!)

Correcting the mistake reveals a methodologist who looks at unfinished work and makes a judgment due to bias, bias unchallenged by his own methodology. That happens a lot with methodologists. At least, so it seems to me.

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An instrumental theory is one that makes accurate predictions but doesn’t explain the link between cause and effect. Many philosophers and some scientists dislike instrumental theories.

I’ll give four examples of instrumental theories and conclude that lack of causal explanations isn’t a good reason to discard a theory. I’ll suggest a better criterion. (Plot twist: Lakatos was right!)

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