Hal Orbach had attempted to make the post on Nikola Tesla below in mid-April, but apparently it did not go through to the list. He asked me to forward it to the list.
Gene Halton
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Harold L. Orbach <hlo <at> ksu.edu>
To: peirce-l <at> list.iupui.edu
Sent: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:14:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Nikola Tesla
Anny, Jaime and Peirce-L contributors,
The Tesla volume has a mechanical inked imprint on page 'v' stating
it was a gift from Mrs. Charles S. Peirce, one of a large number
that were given to the library eventually along with manuscripts
that were in his home at Milford, as a result of the efforts of
Josiah Royce to preserve Peirce's work and library.
The manuscripts remained for a long time in the possession of the Philosophy Department and a number of people have written about the poor condition in which they were kept, indeed "used" and "abused"
simply "lying about" in the Department's rooms. There is no "seal"
or "personal dedication" from Juliette Peirce in the book as one
can see from the pages of the google ebook by simply entering the search term 'Peirce' which reveals two occurrences. The other on
page 'iv' which is not "pictured" as is page 'v' contains the publication information normally on the verso of a title page.
Peirce may have obtained the copy as part of his own failed
attempts to develop "practical" applications for some of his
ideas about using natural elements (waterfalls) and "discovered"
phenomena (acetylene gas) to produce energy for various industrial
money-making purposes (e.g., electric bleaching, making glue and street lighting). This was during a period, from the early 1890s
on, described in Brent's biography (pp.250 ff.) when Peirce was thinking of schemes where his scientific knowledge could secure
him great profits, such as were being realized by many of the newly
enriched of New York. It was a time while he was borrowing money wherever he could and at the same time being sued in Milford for non-payment of debts that caused him eventually to have to flee
the area to avoid court suits and potential jail, living in New
York in eventual abject poverty, which reached a low point c.1895
when Juliette was ill, required hospitalization that eventuated
in a hysterectomy. During this period, Peirce's attempt to involve
his politician cousin Lodge, Judge Russell, friends, and various entrepreneurs associated with the Century Club of Manhattan in
some of his schemes failed to materialize. This was at the same
general time that Tesla was working for Edison, quitting when
Edison failed to adequately compensate him for his work and then
began a series of associations with electric and other companies
that were interested in his plans for creating electric power and using his discovery of practical generators producing alternating current that led to successful harnessing of the Niagara river and falls near Massena, NY, for street lighting, just where Peirce had thought of the same thing as early as 1893, but without a successful model or any backing.
It is somewhat interesting that the major contributors to the
Peirce-L in the last few years (which has led to the self
analysis of why the discussions have been dominated by a few
persons and whether there should be limits) have largely
abandoned efforts to understand the context and historical circumstances in which Peirce lived hand and mouth in New York, according to Brent for a time reduced to living on the streets,
asking for books to review for meager sums, etc. Perhaps, and I
haven't seen the list developed by Ketner of all the books Peirce reviewed in The Nation, Tesla's book was one of these. In any
case, some of Peirce's grandiose proposals for volumes and
histories et al., of this period, which were never completed
were attempts to raise money to survive and be able to return
and secure Arisbe again which was under a mortgage which provided
that sans tenant it could be sold, but was not because there was
no buyer. In one example cited by Brent, p.242, a sheriff's sale
of Peirce's household possessions to pay off debts largely
incurred in improvements to Arisbe is quoted that describes many
of his library books, equipment and instruments for sale. The
lot was bought by his brother James Mills who saved what he could
and returned them to Peirce, also saving Arisbe by securing a mortgage, making many payments on it, and attempting to get Peirce lectures at Harvard and some of his works published through his father's publisher. Even while still at Milford in 1893-4, Brent quotes from Peirce's attempts to secure loans and money from a
number of friends and at one point quotes a letter in which Peirce describes being near starvation before Langley in Washington sent
him some money and some work (pp.241-2).
This apart from his earlier years when suffering attacks of a
disabling neuralgia made him a heavy user of opiates -- also
discussed by Ketner in the context of his first "secret" marriage
to a very young Boston girl where he was very manipulative and dominating of her, talking her into a hidden marriage by a written contract he drew up following an "oral" one, during which they obviously lived apart (1860-61); a marriage that she ended and returned most of his letters to her (and apparently destroyed some others) and he was supposed to return her letters but didn't (cf. His Glassy Essence, pp. 213ff., and Ketner's footnotes that cite
the file that Max Fisch uncovered and is part of his archive at The Peirce Project in Indianapolis.)
I also noted, but did not have time previously to reply to concerns that link his religious views to his father and other family, that neglect the influence of his "old friend" Francis Ellingwood Abbot
who as a leader in the "Free Religion" movement of the Unitarian Church (cf. his Scientific Theism, 1885) was instrumental in creating
the Universalist movement which he also later left as not "free"
and "scientific" enough. Abbot also was instrumental in fighting
the largely anti-Catholic movement of the late 1870s and on to
amend the US Constitution and declare the U.S. as a "Christian"
nation, with the King James version of the Bible as the official
text; this despite his own series of anti-Catholic articles.
Abbot also was credited by Peirce for having earlier seen the
truth of realism and helping him abandon nominalism. I discussed
this some years back on the list. And it was Abbot's doctoral dissertation, based on his lectures at Harvard when he replaced
Royce in the Spring of 1888, after Royce's mental collapse and almost year's leave, published in 1890 as "The Way Out of
Agnosticism. or the Philosophy of Free Religion" that Royce attacked in his review in The Nation leading Peirce to reply to
Royce in defense of his old friend.
Some 30 years ago, Max Fisch, in Indianapolis, showed me how Peirce
would begin a manuscript only to veer off at some point on a topic
he raised, only to return or not return later on so that many of
his manuscripts looked like trees; and how as he ran out of money
at times, he would water his ink, making some manuscripts very difficult to read; but he never watered his wine, when he had it.
Peirce was quite a gourmet in his earlier years in New York when
he frequented the fashionable Brevoort House, on Fifth Avenue and
Washington Square, a hotel where he met his third wife, Juliette,
a block south of the house where Mark Twain lived during his time
in New York. Ketner discusses this early period when Peirce was actively working for the Coast Survey, earning a good salary, and traveling back and forth to France and Europe and setting up sites
in the US for gravity stations and pendulum studies, carrying out scientific measurements, and then following Juliette to fashionable Washington when she moved there. It was as a successful practicing
experimental scientist, carrying out measurement studies and
establishing sites for "gravity stations" for the Coast Survey that
his father helped direct that Peirce earned his original repute in
the U.S. and in Europe as a successful scientist.
One would hope that Ketner would finish his novel "autobiography"
of Peirce using Peirce's own words and providing so much knowledge
of the context of his life.
Harold L. Orbach
Emeritus, Sociology
Kansas State University
{For those whom I haven't communicated directly in the past, my
B.S. was in Philosophy and History and I went through my MA exams
in Philosophy at Minnesota, studying largely with Wilfrid Sellars
and attending all the programs of the Philosophy of Science center
through which passed the leaders in the field in the US in the
1950's, in good measure the European exiles of various scientific,
empiricist, logical-mathematical and positivist movements who fled
the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II, before taking my PhD in Sociology there. )