Dissertation Abstract

Creativity And The Philosophy Of C. S. Peirce

by

Douglas Rand Anderson

Degree: PH.D.

Year: 1984

Pages: 251

Institution: The Pennsylvania State University; 0176

Source: DAI, 45, no. 10A, (1984): 3145

The central task of this thesis is to construct a Peircean view of artistic creativity. To achieve this end, I employ two analogies. The first compares Peirce's explicit accounts of scientific creativity to what he might have said about artistic creativity. It concludes that science is primarily analogical reasoning, whereas art is metaphorical reasoning. The second analogy compares Peirce's account of God's creative evolution of the universe to the way an artist develops a work of art. The two analogies taken together provide a preliminary description of Peircean artistic creativity. The central feature of this view is that creativity takes place by a developmental, not a deterministic, teleology.

In the course of the thesis, I examine several Peircean notions which are of central concern for Peirce scholarship. These are: his understanding of scientific abduction, his idea of metaphor, the problem of a developmental teleology, and role chance plays in Peirce's thought.

SUBJECT(S)

Descriptor: PHILOSOPHY

Accession No: AAG8429052

Provider: OCLC

Database: Dissertations