The Peirce Project has entered a new fiscal year without any substantial external funding. Our University funding has also been substantially reduced, but we are fortunate that it is sufficient to support some manuscript reorganization and editing work while we endeavor to revamp the Project's organizational structure and production methods and widen our financial support base. Although we hope to receive significant support from Federal granting agencies, it is essential that a respectable percentage of our annual needs be met from our constituency: those of you who agree that it is important to continue the work that Josiah Royce began 80 years ago when he had the Peirce manuscripts brought to Harvard to be sorted and edited for publication. Hartshorne, Weiss, and Burks achieved the first great success with their Harvard Edition (which could not have been brought to completion without the substantial support of private patrons). But all Peirce scholars know that a large and unwieldy mass of manuscripts remains virtually inaccessible for general philosophical research. You are invited to help continue this work!

We heard from some of you after the first issue of the Newsletter. Some of you gave us excellent advice about how to be effective fund raisers (and your ideas have begun to guide us). Others gave money, for which we are very grateful. In addition to the primary editing work, there is much to be done to get the Max Fisch Library into shape and to organize an effective research center. External funding is critical.

Your gift is extremely important. If you agree that the Peirce Project is a valuable scholarly effort and would like to see it continue, please become a Project supporter. Send your gift, in an amount you can afford, to Indiana University Foundation, P.O. Box 1596, Indianapolis IN 46206-1596, and be sure to make your check payable to the Peirce Edition Project (Acct# 32-16620). Contact Nathan Houser or Beth Eccles at the Peirce Project for more information.

We would like to hear from more of you about how you can support the Project. Please consider including the Project in your will or making it the beneficiary of an insurance policy. Are there other ways you can support our work? Let us hear from you.

The Peirce Project depends on specialists from many fields for help in preparing our critical text and editorial annotations. Generally the heaviest burden falls on our contributing editors and advisors--and no doubt that will not change. However, with the Newsletter we hope to extend the scope of communal involvement. We are not sure what kinds of questions can effectively be raised in this format but in the next few issues we'll do some experimenting. If you can provide some answers, or some guidanc e, please reply in writing or by electronic mail to CPEIRCE@INDYCMS.IUPUI.EDU. Unless otherwise noted, replies should be directed to Nathan Houser (General Editor) or Beth Eccles (Newsletter Editor).

Question 1. Where can we find original Peirce writings (manuscripts, notebooks, letters, annotated books and offprints, and so forth) that are not now accounted for in the "public" Peirce nachlass? Rumor has it that some original Peirce manuscripts are buried in uncataloged archival deposits or have ended up in private hands--but, unfortunately, such rumors have not been specific. Recent discoveries of important manuscripts and letters at the Open Court, the National Archives, and at Columbia Universit y give some reason to hope that more "Peirce" will turn up. Where is his finished spectrum meter report? It seems to have been circulating in Washington in the mid-1880's. What happened to Peirce's Nation submissions? His Century Dictionary submission s and correspondence? His work for Baldwin? Why have so few (relatively speaking) of his original letters turned up? Are there still unaccounted-for manuscripts and annotated books from those Harvard gave to interested scholars or that Peirce, himself, gave away? If you can help us track down any original Peirce documents it will further our work and may be of considerable value for Peirce scholarship. (Please note that questions of ownership are not our concern. We would like to see original docume nts to make copies or transcriptions and to add to the record of where originals are located.)

Question 2. Who is Mr. Soehmer? In the Peirce letters folders at Harvard there is a fragment of a letter (draft) to Mr. Soehmer which begins: "The equation of the elastic curve in its simplest expression is ry = a[squared] where r is the radius of curvat ure." [Read a Greek rho for r.] There is no date on the fragment but in his notes Max H. Fisch indicates that the letter was written in Key West (where Peirce was on assignment for the Coast Survey) on April 12, 1885. This was during a period when Peir ce was working on his definitions for the Century Dictionary, for which he defined "elastic curve" (see W5: 391-2), so possibly Soehmer worked for the Century Company. Or perhaps he was a mathematician, or possibly a student. Has anyone heard of him?

Question 3. Who wrote the following verse (quoted by Peirce in MS 1345, c. 1892)?

Peace! And no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies,
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise!

INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN PRAGMATICISM Texas Tech University

The Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism was founded in 1971 by Kenneth Ketner and Charles Hardwick. It is the oldest among centers for Peirce research, being a collection of materials and facilities for research into the philosophy of Charles Peirce and related topics. Its holdings now include annotated copies of Peirce's Harvard manuscripts and professional correspondence, plus related photographs, microfilm, books, offprints, and preprints of secondary literature. The Institute welcomes guest scholars to use its collections, and is visited by workers from the United States and other nations.

In 1984, after being housed in various temporary quarters at Texas Tech, with the assistance of a private donation, the Institute was moved into its present comfortable home of 1500 square feet within the University Library Special Collections area.

Ketner, the Institute's Director, is also Peirce Professor of Philosophy. The Institute is physically housed in the Library but reports to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. A modest endowment, The Claude Ventry Bridges Memorial Fund, provides income for basic expenses.

For more information contact Professor Kenneth L. Ketner, 304 A Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409.

THE CENTER FOR SEMIOTIC RESEARCH IN LAW, GOVERNMENT, AND ECONOMICS Pennsylvania State University

The Center for Semiotic Research in Law, Government, and Economics, established in the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State, completes its first decade. As proposed by Executive Director Roberta Kevelson, the characteristically Peircean triadic objective has been: 1) to provide a missing focus on essential relations between Peirce's semiotics, his pragmatic method, and the practical sciences of law, politics, and economics, which are viewed as discourse-types and sign-systems; 2) to serve as a forum, through annual, international, transdisciplinary Round Tables of law and semiotics; 3) to produce a substantive collection of referential literature and research tools. A consortial type of organization among other Peirce and semiotic projects and the Center is ideally in the future, but this Center, together with counterparts in Venezuela, the U. K., Italy, and France, have successfully co-sponsored the International Association for Semiotics and Law and its official organ, the International Journal for Law and Semiotics. Three series of books have been published under the auspices of the Center and the Series Editorship of Roberta Kevelson, with a fourth series to begin in 1995: Law and Semiotics (Plenum); Semiotics and the Human Sciences (P. Lang); Critic of Institutions (P. Lang); WorldMaking/SignMaking (Rodopi). Support for the Center is provided by several divisions and offices of Penn State and from the Xerox Foundation's generous grant, now in its sixth year.

For more information contact: Roberta Kevelson, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, The Berks Campus, Reading, PA, 19609, FAX: (215) 320-4912.

POST-GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND SEMIOTICS Sao Paulo Catholic University, Brazil

The post-graduate program in Communication and Semiotics at the Sao Paulo Catholic University was founded in 1978. It is directed by Lucia Santaella-Braga; the assistant director is Arlindo Machado. In the present year, 1994, there are nearly 300 students enrolled, 200 for masters and 100 for doctoral studies. 200 students have scholarships provided by three of the most important research foundations in Brazil (CNPq, CAPES and FAPESP). All students get both their Masters and their Ph.D. degrees in Semiotics. Since 1978, 149 Masters theses and 37 Ph.D. dissertations have been defended in the program. The teaching staff is composed of 16 permanent professors and five participant professors. The technical and creative staff includes two music composers and one supervisor for research on electronic images. One of the main lines of research in the program is theoretical or philosophical semiotics. From 1978 to 1987, courses on the semiotics of C. S. Peirce were offered every semester (from March to June and from August to November). As research on Peirce began to increase, since 1987, courses were organized in two levels: an introductory one about topics such as "The Role of Semiotics in Peirce's Philosophy," or "Strategies for Applying Peirce's Semiotics," "Peirce's Doctrine of Signs" etc., and on a more advanced level, specific or specialized topics are studied in courses about "Peirce's Theory of Perception," "Peirce's Aesthetics" or "Peirce's Metaphysics." The policy is to have no more than 15 students enrolled in each class, but the number of students enrolled in courses on Peirce is never less than 30, sometimes reaching 50. Several Peirce-oriented theses or dissertations have been defended in the last 15 years, and more are in progress.

In 1994, a Center for Studies on Peirce was founded in connection with the post-graduate program. The aim of the Center is to gather the researchers who are interested in developing in-depth studies on Peirce. The activities of the Center now being defined will include interest groups in special topics and mini-courses on Peirce open to people outside the University. In sum, the aim is to spread Peirce's thought.

INSTITUT DE RECHERCHE EN SEMIOTIQUE, COMMUNICATION ET EDUCATION University of Perpignan, France.

IRSCE is an "Equipe d'Accueil" (SEMeLANG: Semiotique et Langages no. 763) headed by Professor Joelle Rethore. The Institute was created in 1974-5 by Professor Gerard Deledalle from philosophy and four colleagues from general and applied linguistics, English, mathematics, and filmology, and was later expanded to psychoanalysis, painting, French literature and, most recently, didactics of French as a foreign language and translatology. The Institute is composed of seven permanent researchers, six Ph. D. students, and ten post-graduates who are completing D.E.A.'s (diplome d'etudes approfondies) in "Semiotique, Langage et Litteratures." Its activities range from (i) conducting a weekly seminar (to which one or two foreign colleagues have been invited one month per year since 1990), this seminar being sometimes open to the public, to (ii) co-editing special issues of journals (among others Cruzeiro Semiotico nos. 8, 13, 14, 15; Degres nos. 54-5; S. Revue Europeenne de Semiotique, no. 4, 1989, and no. 5, 1993, in homage to G. Deledalle) and books (in particular the 3 volumes of the Proceedings of the IVth IASS Congress, Mouton-De Gruyter, 1993, and the translation of some of Peirce's writings, A la recherche d'une methode, Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 1993), (iii) organizing international conferences (nine since 1976, including the IVth congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in 1989) and art exhibitions, (iv) publishing books, papers, and reviews, and (v) tutoring young researchers.

For more information contact Professor Joelle Rethore, Director of IRSCE, University of Perpignan, Avenue de Villeneuve, PERPIGNAN Cedex 66860, FRANCE, FAX: 68 50 12 89.

PEIRCE-L Worldwide

A forum on the Internet for discussion of things related to Peirce's philosophy.

"The meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual."

"Thought is what it is only by virtue of its addressing a future thought which is in its value as thought identical with it, though more developed. In this way, the existence of thought now depends on what is to be hereafter; so that it has only a potential existence, dependent on the future thought of the community."

PEIRCE-L is a lightly moderated, list-based discussion forum managed by Joseph Ransdell of the Department of Philosophy at Texas Tech University. Established in August 1993 in an experimental spirit, it has proven to be an attractor for an unusually sophisticated interdisciplinary clientele, corresponding to Peirce's own polymathic interests and achievements, as well as for the professional philosophers interested in his work. There are presently some 250 members (i.e. subscribers to the distribution list), from more than 20 different countries and a remarkably broad range of academic disciplines. All messages and discussions are recorded in retrievable files, and the forum is now based in a machine with a file server system which will enable users to develop a continually accumulating library of secondary and primary materials, pre-prints, and scholarly aids; to provide bulletin board facilities of various sorts; and to function as a communicational center coordinating resources and research centers world-wide. If you are not yet on-line, you now have reason to broaden your professional life in this way. If you wish to contribute to the development of a vigorous world-wide communicational community of persons with a common interest in Peirce's work, you can now do so. To join send an e-mail message to the following internet address:

listproc@unicorn.acs.ttu.edu

This should contain the following single-line message:

SUBSCRIBE PEIRCE-L firstname lastname

There is no need to include your e-mail address, which will be assumed to be the address from which your message originates. Instead of subscribing in this way, which is handled by an automatic mechanism, you can send an e-mail message to Joe Ransdell, and he will subscribe you. Ransdell's internet address is

bnjmr@ttacs.ttu.edu

It should be understood that, in joining, there is no obligation to contribute overtly to the group. If you are already acquainted with network communication, you probably know that presence as a listener only is commonly recognized as a positive contribution to the reality of these new and loosely knit communicational communities. But of course active participation, as time permits, is always welcomed, too. When you subscribe you receive explanatory information both about the group as a communicational community and about the "listserv" mechanisms that enable it. There is no subscription fee or charge for any service.