Peirce and Bolzano

Thomas G. Winner

pp. 157-169

in: Guy Debrock, Menno Hulswit (eds), Living doubt, Berlin, Springer, 1994

Abstract

Like Peirce, whom he preceded by roughly half a century, Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), the brilliant mathematician, logician and semiotician who taught and wrote in Prague, was little recognized in his lifetime. Like Peirce, he endured persecution for his uncompromising attitudes, in his case both in science and political-religious life: also Bolzano's teaching career, like Peirce's, was cut short, in Bolzano's case because of official displeasure of the Vatican and the Vienna court over his resolute and unwavering liberalism in religious, social and political matters and towards the relation of Czechs and Germans in the Bohemian crownlands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Bolzano's principal scientific contribution was, like Peirce's, in the area of mathematics and logic; and Bolzano's logic, like Peirce's, contained major contributions to semiotics, which Bolzano called the theory of signs (Zeichenlehre) and Semiotik, though Bolzano's Zeichenlehre was certainly not as comprehensive and systematic as Peirce's semeiotic. Unlike Peirce, Bolzano is known primarily to logicians and to specialists in Catholic theology, while his semiotics has received relatively little attention.

Cited authors

Bolzano Bernard

Peirce Charles Sanders