Journal of the History of Philosophy

308 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:2 APRIL 199o Tursman thus shows us how intricately involved the interrelations among Peirce's categories, his theory of signs, and his account of the method of science really are. Understanding precisely what these interrelations are and how they function is, however , crucial to understanding Peirce's philosophical thought, and specifically, his account of the method of science. We should be able to see, for example, the differences between Peirce's account of inquiry and both positivistic and the various "postpositivistic " approaches to the method of science. Tursman's book makes one other important contribution that should be noticed. It is commonly thought that Peirce said very little in a systematic fashion about the third branch of his semiotic, Speculative Rhetoric. The amount of secondary literature on Speculative Rhetoric, moreover, is quite small. Tursman's treatment of Speculative Rhetoric in the last three chapters of his book marks a substantial addition to the available material. Peirce characterized Speculative Rhetoric as being concerned both with the laws of inference that govern the relations of signs with signs, and the theory of the method of inquiry. What this suggests, I think, is that Peirce in fact said quite a lot about Speculative Rhetoric, much of it far more systematically presented than is usually assumed. By presenting the account of Peirce's logic of discovery in the way that he has, Tursman illustrates the very point I have just made. In short, Tursman may well have contributed the first book on Peirce's Speculative Rhetoric. I have one criticism to mention. Upon reaching the point of saying that induction, for Peirce, does not need vindicating, Tursman associates the views of Ayer and Madden and suggests that for both, Peirce is concerned with the vindication of induction. While the view that Peirce saw a need to justify induction, or that Peirce's account of sciences anticipates recent "vindications" of induction (e.g., Reichenbach) can be attributed to Ayer and others, such a view cannot be attributed to Madden. Madden asserts, for example, that "the whole concept of vindicating induction is foreign to Peirce's thought.''4 Any attempt to suggest that such a need arises in Peirce ignores the distinction between abductive and inductive inference, and while Tursman is quite aware of this, he should also be aware that a "vindicationist" view is expressly rejected by Madden. PATRICK SULI.IV^N University of Kentucky R. C. Grogin. The Bergsonian Controversy in France, x9oo-x9z4 • Calgary, Alberta: The University of Calgary Press, 1988. Pp. x + a~. $19.95. For a long time the thought of Henri Bergson appears to have been of little interest to English-speaking philosophers. Few have produced any Bergsonian studies, so that apart from general accounts in reference works and encyclopedias, scarcely anything 4 Edward H. Madden, "ScientificInference: Peirceand the Humean Tradition," in Pragmatismand Purpose:EssaysPresentedto ThomasA. Goudge,ed. L. W. Sumner,John G. Slater, and Fred Wilson(Toronto: Universityof Toronto Press, i98 l), 59-- BOOK REVIEWS 302 detailed about him has been published in English. This state of affairs is hardly satisfactory in view of Bergson's status in his native land during his own lifetime. Here he was a dominant figure who wrote several books of international repute. Posterity thus seems unwise to assume that they can now be ignored. In any case Robert Grogin's new study is surely to be welcomed for presenting evidence that what Bergson had to say to his own generation is worth attending to now. A central theme of the study is marked by the word "controversy" in the title. Grogin undertakes to show that during the period specified, Bergson's ideas were a major topic of debate in a number of areas of French intellectual culture. Two of these areas were the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion. In both the old stability and authority of the intellectual culture in its heyday were beginning to diminish . Hence the way was open for Bergson's novel ideas to challenge the received opinions. The result was to generate controversies, one of the most pervasive being the controversy about "mechanism." Hence the opening chapter of...