Peirce on Science and Metaphysics: Overview of a Synoptic Vision

Abstract

The explanatory priority of natural science is an hallmark of pragmatism in the Peircean tradition. In his case the pride of place accorded to natural science applied in the first instance to science conceived concretely as an empirically constrained hypothetico-deductive methodology but the privileging spilled over to actual scientific explanations conceived of as converging on a complete explanation in the limit. However, from his perspective this privileging of natural science did not exclude metaphysical explanation but rather required it. In this paper I intend to explore the several different senses of “metaphysical inquiry” in the Peircean project as a step toward endorsing some and questioning others.