Re: Michael Harris • My Réseau • Networks in Action in French Economics
Readers of Peirce know that the concept of community is integral to his treatment of inquiry, interpretation, knowledge, reality, and truth. The following statement is a nice résumé of all the main points.
Peirce, C.S. (1868), “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities”, Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (1868), 140–157. Reprinted (Collected Papers 5.264–317), (Writings 2, 211–242), (Essential Peirce 1, 28–55). Online.
More casual or selective readers may take Peirce for a pioneer in the sociology of knowledge and jump to the conclusion that his social theory is tantamount to a “coherence theory” or a “consensus theory” of truth. But a leap like that underestimates the gulf between actual finite communities and what is actually a regulative ideal, a community without definite limits capable of an indefinite increase of knowledge. The relation between the two is like that between an empirical sample and a theoretical population of unknown extent.
Inquiry Into Inquiry 