Still, It Will Sometimes Strike A Scientific

A Sign, Or Representamen, Is Something Which Stands To Somebody For Something In Some Respect Or Capacity. It Addresses Somebody,that Is, Creates In The Mind Of That Person An Equivalent Sign, Or Perhaps A More Developed Sign. That Sign Which It Creates I Call The Interpretant Of The First Sign. The Sign Stands For Something, Its Object. It Stands For That Object, Not In All Respects, But In Reference To A Sort Of Idea, Which I Have Sometimes Called The Ground Of The Representamen.

Kepler's Discovery Would Not Have Been Possible Without The Doctrine Of Conics. Now Contemporaries Of Kepler-such Penetrating Minds As Descartes And Pascal-were Abandoning The Study Of Geometry ... Because They Said It Was So Utterly Useless. There Was The Future Of The Human Race Almost Trembling In The Balance; For Had Not The Geometry Of Conic Sections Already Been Worked Out In Large Measure, And Had Their Opinion That Only Sciences Apparently Useful Ought To Be Pursued, The Nineteenth Century Would Have Had None Of Those Characters Which Distinguish It From The Ancien Régime.

The Difference Between A Pessimistic And An Optimistic Mind Is Of Such Controlling Importance In Regard To Every Intellectual Function, And Especially For The Conduct Of Life, That It Is Out Of The Question To Admit That Both Are Normal, And The Great Majority Of Mankind Are Naturally Optimistic.

The Woof And Warp Of All Thought And All Research Is Symbols, And The Life Of Thought And Science Is The Life Inherent In Symbols; So That It Is Wrong To Say That A Good Language Is Important To Good Thought, Merely; For It Is The Essence Of It.

There Is Not A Single Truth Of Science Upon Which We Ought To Bet More Than About A Million Of Millions To One.