[walterbell]

"Who is the most original and the most versatile intellect that the Americas have so far produced? The answer "Charles S. Peirce" is uncontested, because any second would be so far behind as not to be worth nominating. Mathematician, astronomer, chemist, geodesist, surveyor, cartographer, metrologist, spectroscopist, engineer, inventor; psychologist, philologist, lexicographer, historian of science, mathematical economist, lifelong student of medicine; book reviewer, dramatist, actor, short story writer; phenomenologist, semiotician, logician, rhetorician and metaphysician.

He was, for a few examples, the first modern experimental psychologist in the Americas, the first metrologist to use a wave-length of light as a unit of measure, the inventor of the quincuncial projection of the sphere, the first known conceiver of the design and theory of an electric switching-circuit computer, and the founder of "the economy of research." He is the only system-building philosopher in the Americas who has been both competent and productive in logic, in mathematics, and in a wide range of sciences. If he has had any equals in that respect in the entire history of philosophy, they do not number more than two."

--Max H. Fisch in Sebeok, The Play of Musement

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/

[j2kun]

Reading through the background materials, some of the claims they make seem a bit suspect. Many of the "discoveries" are that he suggested something might be possible without actually giving any evidence or construction besides his own philosophical musings. This is in re: cardinals, information theory, and computers. And then because someone did it later he is cited as a genius before his time.

But if he wrote over 10,000 pages of publications and articles, how many of his claims and ideas were false, misleading, or inaccurate? Is genius measured by the number of ideas that don't come to fruition, or by lasting successes? We don't cite Darwin as a politician despite his writings about the politics of his time. Nor do we particularly praise Turing as an athlete despite his running hobby.

[walterbell]

> how many of his claims and ideas were false, misleading, or inaccurate?

A century has passed and his work has been analyzed by a variety of academics. Pointers to capable critiques would be welcome.

[__Joker]

Apologies, if I am ignorant here. But what is this quote and how it is pertinent to the OP ?

[walterbell]

He was a philosopher, whose work in the late 1800s was a precursor to computer science. Practical applications have been found in modern research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Peirce

"Peirce considered himself, first and foremost, a logician. He made major contributions to logic, but logic for him encompassed much of that which is now called epistemology and philosophy of science. He saw logic as the formal branch of semiotics, of which he is a founder. As early as 1886 he saw that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits; the same idea was used decades later to produce digital computers."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/#con

"Currently, considerable interest is being taken in Peirce's ideas by researchers wholly outside the arena of academic philosophy. The interest comes from industry, business, technology, intelligence organizations, and the military; and it has resulted in the existence of a substantial number of agencies, institutes, businesses, and laboratories in which ongoing research into and development of Peircean concepts are being vigorously undertaken."

[arethuza]

I definitely think Peirce should be more famous - particularly for identifying abductive reasoning:

"Deduction proves that something must be; Induction shows that something actually is operative; Abduction merely suggests that something may be."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning