Peirce's Scientific Metaphysics: The Philosophy of Chance, Law, and Evolution

Introduction

1 Introduction Charles Peirce’s metaphysical writings, in particular those dealing with his evolutionary cosmology, have not met with the same popular approval as have his contributions to symbolic logic, philosophy of science, and the theory of signs. In fact, Gallie (1952, 215) has referred to the cosmology as the “black sheep” or “white elephant” of Peirce’s philosophy. Given the positivistic temper of philosophy throughout the first half of the twentieth century, many people who were impressed by Peirce’s researches in formal logic have been shocked to find that the very same figure could have engaged in such a speculative metaphysical venture as his evolutionary cosmology. Consequently, the task of exposition and analysis of these writings has fallen largely to commentators with a keener interest in his semeiotics (theory of signs) than in his philosophy of science. This has resulted in the literature on Peirce’s cosmology—which was to be his scientific metaphysics—tending to be rather silent on the more technical issues that are of importance from the standpoint of the history and philosophy of science.1 In 1985, Christopher Hookway wrote that “Peirce’s cosmology has not received any fully adequate treatment in the secondary literature .”2 Today, seventeen years later, the situation remains arguably unchanged. While I do not presume to say that this book furnishes a “fully adequate treatment,” I do hope it plays a significant role toward this end by providing a deeper analysis of Peirce’s cosmological writings than has yet been available. Rather than engage in an investigation of the more abstract and broadly philosophical issues, as the available secondary sources specifically concerned with the cosmology have done (cf. Turley, 1977; Esposito, 1980; HausFind a scientific man who proposes to get along without any metaphysics . . . and you have found one whose doctrines are thoroughly vitiated by the crude and uncriticized metaphysics with which they are packed. —Charles Sanders Peirce [1.129] 2 Peirce’s Scientific Metaphysics man, 1993; Sheriff, 1994), I will focus here on the scientific questions and ideas that concerned Peirce and that in turn shaped his cosmological thesis. Given Peirce’s habit of thinking in terms of trios or triads, it is only fitting that this study of his metaphysics is woven together of three main themes that are closely entwined like the overlapping strands of a cable. These are, in no particular order, evolution, statistics , and German Naturphilosophie. Evolution Peirce’s philosophy belongs, as Nicholas Rescher (1996) has recently written, among the class of process philosophies. The types of processes that most intrigued Peirce in nearly every field of inquiry were irreversible ones, specifically those with a teleological tendency toward particular ends. Evolution, in a variety of forms, from the development of individuals and communities, increase of complexity and diversity, and intellectual development toward “reasonableness ,” is the leitmotif throughout Peirce’s musings on the universe of mind and matter. The difficulty, as he saw it, was to provide an account of these general patterns of irreversible development or evolution that was consistent with contemporary understanding of the reversible laws of physical science. Statistics Recent studies of the “probabilistic revolution,” the spread of probabilistic and statistical thinking throughout the nineteenth century , have noted Peirce’s pioneering efforts toward the construction of a post-deterministic conception of the world (cf. Porter, 1986; Stigler, 1986; Krüger et al., 1987; Gigerenzer et al., 1989; Hacking 1990). During this time, there occurred a shift in thinking that has been alternatively described as the “erosion of determinism” or the “taming of chance,” a shift largely inspired by powerful advances in the theory of probability and statistics and their successful application to a wide variety of problems in the social and natural sciences . Of the studies mentioned above, Hacking (1990) pays the most attention to Peirce’s relevance for these developments, devot- Introduction 3 ing the last chapter of his book to Peirce exclusively. Peirce’s writings on the subject, however, are rich enough to merit a full booklength treatment of their own. What I have set out to do here is to fill in much of the details regarding Peirce’s thinking about the philosophy of chance that are only hinted at in the excellent general studies noted above. In drawing the themes of irreversibility/evolution and statistical thinking together, I show here that Peirce’s cosmological theory is modeled on that result of statistics and probability theory known...