Home

    Commens
    Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce



    Dictionary
    Encyclopedia
    Papers
    Bibliography
    News
    Links

    Latest...

    Upcoming Events & Deadlines

    31/10/2019 Call for Papers | Cognitio: Revista De Filosofia — Call for Papers preview
    04/11/2019 to 07/11/2019 Meeting | 19th International Meeting on Pragmatism preview
    15/01/2020 Call for Papers | Call for Papers - Special issue in "Pragmatism Today" on "Action, Agency and Praxis" preview
    26/02/2020 to 29/02/2020 Meeting | Peirce Society Session at the 2020 Central Division Meeting of the APA preview

    Some Wit, Wisdom & Bewilderment

    Errare est humanum is of all commonplaces the most familiar. Inanimate things do not err at all; and the lower animals very little. Instinct is all but unerring; but reason in all vitally important matters is a treacherous guide. This tendency to error, when you put it under the microscope of reflection, is seen to consist of fortuitous variations of our actions in time. But it is apt to escape our attention that on such fortuitous variation our intellect is nourished and grows. For without such fortuitous variation, habit-taking would be impossible; and intellect consists in a plasticity of habit.
    Reasoning and the Logic of Things, 1898