  Peirce graduated from Harvard in 1859 and received the bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1863, graduating summa cum laude. Except for his remarkable marks in chemistry Peirce was a poor student, typically in the bottom third of his class. Obviously, the standard curriculum bored him, so that he mostly avoided doing seriously its required work. For thirty-two years, from 1859 until the last day of 1891, he was employed by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, mainly surveying and carrying out geodetic investigations. Some of this work Peirce undertook simply to finance his diurnal existence (and that of his first wife Melusina (Zina) Fay), while he devoted the main force of his thinking to abstract logic. Nevertheless, the geodetic tasks involved making careful measurements of the intensity of the earth’s gravitational field by means of using swinging pendulums. The pendulums that Peirce used were often of his own design. For over thirty years, then, Peirce was involved in practical and theoretical problems associated with making very accurate scientific measurements. This practical involvement in physical science was crucial in his ultimately coming to reject scientific determinism, as we shall see.