Charles Sanders Peirce

Peirce stands behind the whole enterprise: the man whose principle, applied to concrete cases, turns abstract disputes into questions about what would actually differ in practice. James treats him as a forerunner who generalized a method Socrates and Aristotle used only in fragments, and who now lends the movement its universal mission. The tension is generational and proprietary — a doctrine 'come to stay' that few understand clearly, sometimes greeted with respect, sometimes with contumely. His principle is the engine that makes the lectures' later arguments possible.