structural:reformatting
Theory of inquiry

In " The Fixation of Belief " (1877), Peirce gives his take on the psychological origin and aim of inquiry. On his view, individuals are motivated to inquiry by desire to escape the feelings of anxiety and unease which Peirce takes to be characteristic of the state of doubt. Doubt is described by Peirce as an "uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief." Peirce uses words like "irritation" to describe the experience of being in doubt and to explain why he thinks we find such experiences to be motivating. The irritating feeling of doubt is appeased, Peirce says, through our efforts to achieve a settled state of satisfaction with what we land on as our answer to the question which led to that doubt in the first place. This settled state, namely, belief, is described by Peirce as "a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid." Our efforts to achieve the satisfaction of belief, by whichever methods we may pursue, are what Peirce calls "inquiry". Four methods which Peirce describes as having been actually pursued throughout the history of thought are summarized below in the section after next.