The Pragmatism Reading Group is held on Mondays in the Board Room (usually at 11am, with exceptions marked below).
Organiser: Niall Roe (nrr32)
Lent Term 2026: On Science and Natural Classes
This term's readings are wide ranging, grouped around understanding the roles and challenges of classification in pragmatist inquiry.
The first four papers relate C.S. Peirce and Ian Hacking, touching on how to carve up a world in flux. We begin with Peirce's account of scientific classes and Hacking's looping effects. The third paper is historical, applying Hacking's notion to Peirce and Whewell. Cowels argues that their attempts to classify scientific methods changed the very subject they were trying to understand. The fourth paper, from Short, is a deeper look at Peirce's position on how stable kinds nevertheless emerge from the process.
The fifth paper returns to classical pragmatism with James' Sentiment of Rationality. He provides a general account of classification and uses it to critically assess the value of systematization itself. The next two papers discuss struggles to get at real kinds in physics and psychology. The final paper ties all this together. Stigler asks how methods from physics made their way into other fields. He comments on how this affected the kinds of objects each field could study, and uses Peirce's psychology experiment as his key example.
26 January – 11.30 in the Board Room
Peirce, C.S., 'On Science and Natural Classes'. Ch 9 in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 2: 1893–1913, by Charles S. Peirce. Indiana University Press.
2 February
Hacking, Ian. 2007. Kinds of People: Moving Targets. British Academy.
9 February
Cowles, Henry M. 2016. 'The Age of Methods: William Whewell, Charles Peirce, and Scientific Kinds'. Isis 107 (4): 722–37.
16 February
Short, T.L. 1998. 'The Discovery of Scientific Aims and Methods'. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (2): 293–312.
23 February – 11.00 in Seminar Room 1
James, William. 1879. 'The Sentiment of Rationality'. Mind 4 (15): 317–46
2 March
Chang, Hasok. 2001. 'Spirit, Air, and Quicksilver: The Search for the "Real" Scale of Temperature'. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 31 (2): 249–84.
9 March
Feest, Uljana. 2011. 'What Exactly Is Stabilized When Phenomena Are Stabilized?'. Synthese 182 (1): 57–71.
16 March
Stigler, Stephen M. 1992. 'A Historical View of Statistical Concepts in Psychology and Educational Research'. American Journal of Education 101 (1): 60–70.