ideas. Of course Peirce’s stock in trade was his ideas, but he had been more willing than ever to turn them, if he could, to commercial ends. How successful he was still remains to be discovered. Extensive searches of New York newspapers and of contemporary magazines remain to be made with the purpose of digging up anonymous reports or hack writings that might have come from his pen (or typewriter). More may be discovered, but we will probably never know how much he managed to sell during that difficult time.
Sometime early in 1890, Peirce and Wendell Phillips Garrison, editor of the Nation, reached an understanding that significantly increased the number of books sent to Peirce for review. Peirce had occasionally reviewed books for the Nation since 1869, but he had never reviewed more than three in a single year, and his August 1889 review of Stock’s Logic had been his first Nation review in three and a half years. Peirce published ten reviews during 1890, and would publish even more in each of the next five years. Only two of Peirce’s 1890 Nation reviews appeared during the period covered in this volume. The first was the review of Noel’s Science of Metrology (sel. 43). Noel was an Englishman who was opposed to the metric system of measurement but who believed that the English system should be reformed. Noel proposed changing the ratios of inches to feet, pounds to gallons, and so forth. Although Peirce saw some merit in Noel’s proposal, he suggested that to challenge the metric system was “like challenging the rising tide” and that the only thing more futile would be to try to change the length of the inch.” The second Nation review was a review of F. Howard Collins’s Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy (sel. 46). This was a very brief notice praising Collins’ “secondhand synopsis” for reducing Spencer’s “heart-breakingly tedious” five thousand pages to a mere five hundred, but lamenting that Collins had gone over fifty.
If Peirce’s increasing number of reviews for the Nation, many of them also appearing in the New York Post, was in fact an outcome of his overwrought effort to raise money during Juliette’s European convalescence, then it should be regarded as his most striking success. For he would produce nearly three hundred more reviews for the Nation and the income supplement from those reviews would be crucial for his and Juliette’s survival—and the loss of that income in 1906, after Garrison’s retirement, would be a serious blow.56 But Peirce’s most notable achievement in raising funds while Juliette was away was his success, working with New York Times’ editor C. R. Miller, in organizing a debate about the soundness of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy that ran for six consecutive Sundays, from 23 March to 27 April. Altogether, the debate consisted of twenty-nine articles and notes. At Miller’s urging, Peirce made a great effort to recruit respondents for this debate. One of his prospects, William James, replied on 16 March that nothing would please him more “than to help stone Uncle Spencer, for of all extant quacks he’s the worst—yet not exactly a quack either for he feels honest, and never would know that a critic had the better of him.” But James begged off because he was so pressed to finish Principles of Psychology. Peirce had sent James copies of his opening article for the Times and probably also his Nation review of Collins, and James wrote that the columns were clever but “possibly a bit too interrogative and transcendentally suggestive to captivate the vulgar.” Not having what it takes to “captivate the vulgar” was James’s usual criticism of Peirce’s writing. He closed by asking when Peirce’s own “radical evolutionary speculations” would see the light.
A 17 March letter from Miller to Peirce serves to illustrate the nature of their collaboration and how the Spencer series was organized.
I wanted to hold the Spencer article until I could be assured of something in reply to or in support of it for the following Sunday Prof. Marsh and Prof. Dana … are both too busy to take a hand, but Prof. Sumner is coming in, probably for a week from next Sunday, that is a week after we print the article. Won’t you stir up Powell and Cope or any of the other combatants you may have in mind and get them to send in their contributions promptly? It is a good thing to have King’s article appear on the same day with Sumner’s by way of ballast, can you get him? For Sunday, the 30th. None of them need sign the articles unless they wish, though we should prefer signatures.
William Graham Sumner, a Yale sociologist, was probably the leading exponent of Social Darwinism in the U.S., and could be counted on to give strong support to the mechanistic principles that Spencer preached—but apparently Sumner never came through with a contribution. The Powell that Miller wanted was Peirce’s friend John W. Powell, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, but he did not enter the debate either. He wrote to Peirce that he would like to join in but did not have the time. King must have been Clarence King, the geologist who advanced the theory that catastrophes and cataclysms are important factors in evolution, particularly with respect to rapid evolutionary developments. King may have contributed as “Kappa.”
The debate opened on 23 March with an introductory editorial and a piece by Peirce, “Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy. Is it Unscientific and Unsound?” (sel. 45), and was framed as a set of questions, but the tone was such as to raise the temperature of Spencer supporters. For example, Peirce took Spencer’s recommendation that a good way to make intellectual progress was to compare competing opinions and settle on those that survive mutual cancellation, as an occasion to ask: “Are thinkers ever really obliged to give all opinions equal votes … ?” He pointed out that there are some things—matter, space, time, law—which Spencer’s “somewhat clumsy conception of evolution has left him no room to explain in any evolutionary sense.” Spencer claimed that these “inexplicables spring directly from the Unknowable” but, Peirce asked, is this resort to the Unknowable really “thoroughgoing evolutionism”? Finally Peirce explained that since Spencer’s intention was to produce “a great scientific theory, a philosophy worthy to form the crown of modern science”—Spencer’s own “guess at the riddle”—it should be evaluated by “the recognized touchstone of a scientific theory”: successful prediction. What scientific discoveries, Peirce wanted to know, can be attributed to Spencer’s synthetic philosophy? Almost at once, after his opening article appeared, Peirce wrote to Miller asking to be paid. Miller replied that “checks for contributions to The Times are made out on Fridays” and he added: “I hope you will stir up as many combatants as possible and promptly.”
Peirce stayed on the sidelines for the following two Sundays while the first seven respondents weighed in, but he contributed a second article on 13 April: “‘Outsider’ Wants More Light” (sel. 47). Claiming once again that he was only seeking light—“an attack would be veiy different”—he replied to all seven respondents, but principally to three who had tried to answer from the standpoint of science. Henry Osborn, a well-known paleontologist, received Peirce’s most serious and polite reply. Peirce drew support from Osborn for his “doubt” that Spencer’s work would have permanent value. He treated Hiram Messenger and Edgar Dawson much less respectfully, essentially ridiculing them; his intent throughout was to stir up interest and emotions to keep the series going. Peirce did raise two or three interesting points that he would develop more fully in later years. In response to Messengers claim that he could find no mathematical errors in Spencer’s extensive writings, Peirce gave a single example. Spencer claimed that all phenomena are “necessary results of the persistence of force.” Peirce pointed out that it would be perfectly consistent with the principle of the persistence of force if at any given moment all the molecules in the universe were assumed to be in their actual positions but with reversed velocities. From that moment on, history would run in reverse. But “eggs grow into birds, not birds back to eggs,” so clearly not all the phenomena of evolution can be mathematical consequences of the persistence of force. In response to “Kappa,” Peirce outlined the seven tasks that have to be performed by a good critic of philosophy. That was a subject that would interest Peirce for the rest of his days. In response to “R.G.E.” he made the interesting observation that his dissatisfaction with Spencer “is not that he is evolutionist, but that he is not evolutionist enough.”
Peirce’s use of the pseudonym “Outsider” for his contributions to this debate may have been partly a ploy to add an air of mystery to the proceedings but it was also intended to situate Peirce outside the prevailing ethos of Social Darwinism. When Miller introduced the debate he indicated that the pseudonym allowed “Outsider”