Peirce's Cosmology

Peter T Turley

• Publisher: Philosophical Library/Open Road
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781504075916
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Metaphysics

A critical sketch of Charles Sanders Peirce's beliefs on the origin of the universe and its evolutionary development.

Charles Sanders Peirce was a nineteenth-century American philosopher and logician known as the father of pragmatism. He devoted much attention to the subject of cosmology, or the origin and development of the universe, but he did not produce substantial work on the subject. In this text, Peter T. Turley collects and analyzes Peirce's writings on what he called "physical metaphysics." Peirce's Cosmology offers a view of nature that may seem commonplace today, but in his time, it represented a break with traditional theories of philosophy and science. His trailblazing writings and Turley's analysis are sure to be of interest to readers of many schools of thought.

Notes

Chapter I—Notes

1. The numbers within parentheses refer to volume and paragraph of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. I-VI ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss; Vols. VII-VIII ed. Arthur W. Burks (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1931-58).

2. Eugene Freeman, in The Categories of Charles Peirce (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1934), pp. 27-30, argues that the phenomenological treatment cannot justify Peirce’s contention that there are no other categories. For the appeal to past experience cannot prove that a higher category will never be given in some future experience. Phenomenology, moreover, is not only unable to determine the number of the categories, it cannot by itself determine even their nature. Freeman’s conclusion is that the phenomenological treatment is not a separate derivation of the categories; rather, its function is to illustrate the relevance of the categories (already derived in logic) to the interpretation of experience.

In a similar vein, Murray Murphey, in his article “On Peirce’s Metaphysics,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, I (Spring, 1965), 17-24, points out that while Peirce has shown that experience instances his categories, he has not shown that all experiences instance them or that any experience must instance them. Murphey’s contention is that Peirce can claim universality and necessity for his categories only by elaborating a metaphysical theory which explains perceptual experience in terms of them and from which it follows that they apply to all perceptual experience. The case for the universality and necessity of the categories, then, would rest upon the cogency of the metaphysical theory. It is noteworthy that Peirce’s evolutionary objective idealism (to be examined in chapter iii) which represents his attempt at such a theory appears to be the most criticized area of his speculation.

3. The nominalist, Peirce adds, cannot save himself by appealing to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities; for such an appeal is not only controverted by modern psychology, but also concedes the reality of unperceived qualities.

4. In his analyses of fact and existence, Peirce is using the pragmatic conception of meaning: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (5.2). In other words, the meaning of any idea, according to Peirce, consists exclusively in the conception of the practical consequences which would necessarily follow upon the truth of the idea, consequences, as William James points out, “either in the shape of conduct to be recommended, or in that of experiences to be expected, …” (5.2).

5. Apropos the nominalist’s rejection of Firstness, see above, p. 18.

6. Charles S. Peirce, “The Laws of Nature and Hume’s Argument Against Miracles,” Values in a Universe of Chance, ed. Philip P. Wiener (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), p. 295. Peirce considered the Ockhamist as the type of nominalist conceptions of law.

7. The nominalist-realist controversy with respect to the laws of nature will be dealt with in chapter ii.

8. Peirce does draw a comparison between the law of nature and habit in the sense of psychological disposition in 5.97-101.

9. See above, p. 27.

10. See above, p. 19.

11. Peirce’s conception of law as a dynamic, general principle exerting final causality is similar to the Aristotelian conception of the individual’s nature.

12. Peirce observes that the physicists themselves are not clear as to what a law of nature is. See “The Laws of Nature and Hume’s Argument Against Miracles,” p. 289.

13. Ibid., p. 291.

14. The precision demanded of a law of nature in 7.84 is inconsistent with the vagueness allowed in 8.192 (see above, p. 27). Moreover, in 1.348 the laws of dynamics are characterized “as hardly being positive laws, but rather mere formal principles, …” These inconsistent statements are hardly attributable to changes in Peirce’s thinking because they were made in the same period, 1902-c. 1904.

15. Apropos, the law of association, “a principle strikingly analogous to gravitation, …” (1.270).

16. “The Laws of Nature and Hume’s Argument Against Miracles,” p. 289. Furthermore, if extramental observation is essential to the Peircean law of nature, then such laws as are the concern of the logician cannot be called laws of nature either—logic is not concerned with the extramental (2.64f.).

17. The Kantian influence is unmistakable.

18. “The Laws of Nature and Hume’s Argument Against Miracles,” pp. 289f.

19. Murphey, “On Peirce’s Metaphysics,” pp. 19-21, suggests that this relative individuality is able to reconcile Secondness and synechism (see above, p. 31). It also indicates that Peirce was not speaking loosely when he said that synechism applies to everything which exists.

20. This minimal generality also makes it easier to understand how Firstness can be in Secondness.

21. Even chance events are attributed to the Divine Efficiency: “But since about 1880 I have entertained the hypothesis that it is the action of this law together with a ceaseless torrent of miracles, that is to say of events absolutely uncaused except by the creative act of God, is all that has brought about and is bringing about the whole universe of mind and matter in all its details.” (The Charles S. Peirce Papers [Microfilm Edition], Houghton Library, Harvard University [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Philosophy Department, 1963-67], #674, p. 14 [variant]) Peirce’s conception of chance as lawlessness will be dealt with in the concluding chapter.

22. There is at least one function of such hypotheses: “If we cannot base any predictions that can be tested upon the hypothesis, then, while we are not to forget that it remains a mere conjecture, we may very conveniently bear it in mind as a way of combining the different features of the phenomenon in our minds.” (The Charles S. Peirce Papers, #873, p. 3)

23. See, for example, The Charles S. Peirce Papers, #284, p. 2; also #859, which is a proof of God’s Infinity.

24. It must be admitted that Peirce wavered somewhat in situating the laws of nature in God. We have already seen this in 5.107 (1903) where he speaks of a consciousness other than God’s as their possible locus. Again, c. 1905: “Pragmaticism tells us that if it be objectively true that nature acts according to these formulae, then they have the same sort of being in the universe or its Demiurge* [Peirce’s note: *making this word indeterminate with respect to finitude or infinitude, while I restrict the term God (with a capital G) to the Absolute Deity] as our intellectual habits have in us.” (The Charles S. Peirce Papers, #289, p. 5) The suggestion that the laws of nature lie in a superhuman, though subordinate consciousness may be due to Peirce’s uneasiness with the conception of creatures residing in God. It should be emphasized that it is a suggestion, since the latter conception was the favored one. Possibly he was influenced in this by the “plastic nature” theory of Cambridge Platonism, according to which natural effects are produced by an agent acting as God’s instrument. See The Charles S. Peirce Papers, #870, p. 36; #871, pp. 8f.

CHAPTER II—NOTES

1. W. B. Gallie, Peirce and Pragmatism (“Pelican Philosophy Series”; Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1952), pp. 153f., attributes the switch in emphasis to Peirce’s recognition of the relational character of properties, that is, that properties can be understood only in relation to laws. Thus, the property “weight” has meaning only in reference to the law of gravitation; accordingly, the question of the significance of the word “weight” turns out to be the question of the significance of the formula expressing the law of gravitation. The thinkers of antiquity and the Middle Ages, Gallie contends, had hypostatized these properties in accordance with their tendency to focus on things rather than the operations in which these things figured. Gallie’s explanation seems to be plausible even though it could be objected that the ancient and medieval participants in this controversy were concerned primarily with the significance of truly substantival words. However this may be, it cannot be denied that Peirce held for a relational conception of properties. To go even further, it can be pointed out that Peirce came to regard essence as equivalent to law (2.409, n. 2); thus, the question of the significance of truly substantival words as “man,” “horse,” and “animal,” words purporting to express the essence, also turns out to be the question of the reality of law.

2. This is not to say that the reality of Secondness is unimpeachable: Berkeley and Hegel, Peirce felt, were notable thinkers who denied the reality of Secondness (5.77-81).

3. “The Paradox of Peirce’s Realism,” Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Philip P. Wiener and Frederic H. Young (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 137.

4. For both Scotus and Ockham, real distinction meant separability of the distinct things. Peirce seizes on this to accuse Ockham of contradiction: “Yet he does not think of denying that an individual consists of matter and form, for these, though inseparable, are really distinct things; …” (8.20). It would appear that Peirce was a little too anxious to retaliate for Ockham’s attack on Scotus: both thinkers admitted the separability of matter and form. However, Peirce can be absolved on his own principle that “any given piece of popular information about scholasticism may be safe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• I. The Law of Nature
• II. Scholastic Realism
• III. Cosmogony
• IV. Chance
• Notes
• Copyright