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

Chapter 2. Irreversibility in Physics

26 2 IrreversibilityinPhysics The aim of this chapter is to outline Peirce’s understanding of the physical principles and theories of the nineteenth century, with special attention being paid to his comments on the role of time as it appears in the laws of mechanics and in the principles of energy physics (dynamics). It is important to see that Peirce’s dissatisfaction with the popular mechanical philosophy was derived from a deep understanding on his part of the principles of mechanics. While Peirce is best known today as a philosopher, the bulk of his career was spent as an experimental physicist. For just over thirty years, he was employed by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, working mostly in the field of geodesy, the study of the earth’s shape, and on problems dealing with finding accurate and reliable standards of measurement (e.g., weight, mass, length). In addition to this work, he also performed several years of astronomical research as an assistant to the supervisor of the Harvard Observatory (a position held for some time by his father, Benjamin Peirce (1809–90), also a Harvard professor of mathematics and astronomy ). During this time, he published a monograph entitled Photometric Researches (1878) under the auspices of the Harvard Observatory. Within the field of mathematical physics, Peirce contributed many original papers on topics such as gravimetrics and pendulum research, the theory of errors of observations, and the theory of weights and measures. His greatest achievement, in his father’s opinion, was his determination of the meter in terms of a wavelength of light. Within the field of geodesy, Peirce earned an international reputation for his original designs of pendulums and Irreversibility in Physics 27 their experimental employment in determining the force of gravity at different locations on the earth. Furthermore, he was also a trained chemist who graduated summa cum laude from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard, acquiring practical experience as a hired consultant after his career with the Geodetic Survey came to an end.1 His membership among several prestigious professional scientific organizations included the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the London Mathematical Society, and the New York Mathematical Society. In sum, he was well situated to reflect on the state of natural science in the nineteenth century (a vocation he performed professionally as a reviewer of technical books for periodicals such as The Nation). Nineteenth-Century Physics It was a common belief among physicists up until the last decade or so of the nineteenth century that all physical phenomena could be accommodated within the framework of Newton’s presentation of the science of mechanics. It is apparent from his writing that Peirce shared this opinion to a degree. Although it will become clear that he felt the need to introduce some element other than force to give a complete explanation of the most general features of our experience of the physical world, he defended Newton’s system (in terms of the quantities mass, force, space, and time) from the criticisms of Mach and others. His dissatisfaction with the Newtonian framework was not that it was in any way flawed or incorrect but that it was—on its own—insufficient to account for some important phenomena . But more accurately, it was a particular philosophical position drawn by many physicists and philosophers from the physics of the day to which Peirce objected. This position he called alternately “mechanicism” or “necessitarianism.” It will be helpful for our understanding of Peirce’s comments concerning physics if we first look at his classification and definition of its several branches. Luckily such definitions are easily obtained, as he wrote all the definitions concerning the topic of mechanics (as well as those of logic, metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy, and weights and measures) for the Century Dictionary (ca. 1889). There we find Peirce defining physics as “the science of the principles op- 28 Peirce’s Scientific Metaphysics erative in nature; the science of forces or forms of energy.” This discipline was divided by him into the branches of 1. Mechanics or dynamics, the science of force in general, with extensive mathematical developments 2. The science of gravitation 3. Molecular physics, the study of the constitution of matter, and of the forces within and between its molecules, including elasticity and heat (an indivisible subject), cohesion, and chemical forces 4. The physics of the ether, being the study of light...