Scholars of the history of philosophy of science read and hear a lot about Duhem, Mach, Poincaré, and the members of the Vienna Circle. C.S. Peirce, however, is not generally considered a canonical figure in the history of philosophy of science. But in the early years of the logical empiricist movement in the United States, Peirce received a warm reception from prominent representatives, proponents, and sympathizers of logical empiricism including Charles Morris, Ernst Nagel, Herbert Feigl, and Phillip Frank. This reception was short-lived though and Peirce gradually disappeared from the mainstream philosophy of science while logical empiricism turned into a formidable movement.

In this talk, I begin by discussing some examples of the early reception of Peirce’s philosophy in the works of Morris, Nagel (and his student Justus Buchler), Feigl, Reichenbach, and Frank. These examples show a persistent and gradually refining engagement with various topics in Peirce’s philosophy of science from the late 1920s to the mid-1950s. I then offer some evidence for the eventual marginalization of Peirce in the mainstream philosophy of science and provide some explanations for it.