A Peircean Panentheist Scientific Mysticism

Abstract

Peirce’s philosophy can be interpreted as an integration of mysticism and science. In Peirce’s philosophy mind is feeling on the inside and on the outside, spontaneity, chance and chaos with a tendency to take habits. Peirce’s philosophy has an emptiness beyond the three worlds of reality (his Categories), which is the source from where the categories spring. He empha- sizes that God cannot be conscious in the way humans are, because there is no content in his “mind.” Since there is a transcendental nothingness behind and before the categories, it seems that Peirce had a mystical view on reality with a transcendental Godhead. Tus Peirce seems to be a panentheist. It seems fair to characterize him as a mystic whose path to enlightenment is science as a social activity.