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. )