Scientific and not Scientistic: the Rich Realism of Pragmatism

In the late years, contemporary philosophy turned towards different forms of realism. Classic pragmatism becomes important again because it can grant a realism respectful of both science and common sense. However, the meaning of realism in a pragmatist perspective, and specifically in Peirce, is not always clear. A fashionable transcendental reading of Peirce and pragmatism often reduces it to a chapter of the rationalist project that goes from Kant to analytic philosophy or to a plausible amendment of the latter. This interpretation loses the originality of Peirce’s philosophy and its revolutionary look at the contemporary enterprise of thought. The paper demonstrates that Peirce and classic pragmatists proposed a peculiar kind of realism that is completely at odds with any sort of scientism, yet is in favor of the real process of scientific inquiry. The paper clarifies the distance between pragmatism and scientism (I), the kind of realism advocated by classic pragmatists – in particular by Peirce – (II), and a different view of science that follows this realism (III).