A Theory of Meaning

At the heart of Peirce’s pragmatism is a new explanation of how words acquire their meanings. He coined the word pragmatism from the Greek word pragma (meaning “act” or “deed”) in order to emphasize the fact that words derive their meanings from actions of some sort. Our ideas are clear and distinct only when we are able to translate them into some type of operation. For example, the adjectives hard and heavy have m