Since the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) originated the idea of a 'community of inquiry' to describe and promote the norms of scientific inquiry, that idea has been used to characterize a wide variety of educational programs, academic disciplines, and institutional, governmental, and political practices. Those who do attribute the notion of a community of inquiry to Peirce, most -- including Matthew Lipman (1923-2010) and Ann Margaret Sharp (1942-2010) -- do not offer any detailed account of which aspects of his thinking are relevant to their projects. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to provide a summary of what Peirce meant by the idea -- how he conceived of community in relation to inquiry -- by explaining what I take to be the five most important elements of his theory of inquiry and three different roles of a community in relation to that theory. A second purpose of this essay, therefore, is to provide a summary of the first iteration of the community of inquiry written by Lipman, Sharp, and Frederick S. Oscanyan and to remark on how it does and does not derive from Peirce.