Tychism ( el, τύχη, translation=chance) is a thesis proposed by the American philosopher

Charles Sanders Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for ...

that holds that absolute chance, or

indeterminism Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or do not cause deterministically. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical prob ...

, is a real factor operative in the universe. This doctrine forms a central part of Peirce's comprehensive evolutionary

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher ...

. It may be considered both the direct opposite of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

's oft quoted dictum that: " God does not play dice with the universe" and an early philosophical anticipation of

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematis ...

uncertainty principle In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physic ...

The thesis

In his theory of tychism, Peirce sought to deny the central position of the

doctrine of necessity The doctrine of necessity is the basis on which extra-constitutional actions by administrative authority, which are designed to restore order or attain power on the pretext of stability, are considered to be lawful even if such an action contrave ...

which maintains that "the state of things existing at any time, together with certain immutable laws, completely determine the state of things at every other time." One of the principal arguments of the necessitarians is that their position involves a presupposition of all science. Peirce attacks this idea asserting: "To 'postulate' a proposition is no more than to hope it is true." Thus an avenue is opened up allowing the entry of chance as a fundamental and absolute entity. Peirce does not, of course, assert that there is ''no'' law in the universe. On the contrary, he maintains that an absolutely chance world would be a contradiction and thus impossible. Complete lack of order is itself a sort of order. The position he advocates is rather that there are in the universe both regularities and irregularities. To explain the presence of such a universal "law" Peirce proposes a ''cosmological theory of evolution'' in which law develops out of chance. The hypothesis that ''out of irregularity, regularity constantly evolves'' seemed to him to have decided advantages not the least being its explanation of "why laws are not precisely or always obeyed, for what is still in a process of evolution can not be supposed to be absolutely fixed."

Underpinnings

Attempting to provide an explanation of some of the more general observable traits of the universe, Peirce formulates four reasons in support of his hypothesis: # Growth and increasing complexity # Variety and diversity # Regularity (laws of nature) # Mind/consciousness/feelingReynolds, pg. 13. He then asks us to consider how these features could possibly be explained by a strictly determined,

mechanistic The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...

theory of the way of all things.

Evolution

Peirce very pointedly observed that all the scientifically viable theories of

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

are based on tychistic formulations.

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression " survival of the f ...

had argued that evolution was an inevitable upwards progress driven by the law of the

conservation of energy In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be ''conserved'' over time. This law, first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, means tha ...

. Peirce rejected this idea, pointing out that energy conservation, like other laws of classical physics, is time-symmetric. Turning to Darwin he points out that the fundamental driver of his theory is accidental variation, noting that "Darwinian evolution is evolution by the operation of chance, and the destruction of bad results." Even the

catastrophism In geology, catastrophism theorises that the Earth has largely been shaped by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. This contrasts with uniformitarianism (sometimes called gradualism), according to which slow incremen ...

Clarence King Clarence Rivers King (January 6, 1842 – December 24, 1901) was an American geologist, mountaineer and author. He was the first director of the United States Geological Survey from 1879 to 1881. Nominated by Republican President Rutherford B. H ...

and others, which postulates an acceleration in evolutionary change via sudden environmental dislocations, naturally falls under the rubric of tychism. This evolutionary aspect of tychism compels Peirce to expand Darwin's view to a cosmological level, sending its operations back to the origin of the universe under the regulative principle of his synechism.

Notes

References

*Hamblin, Francis Murphy, "A Comment on Peirce's 'Tychism'", ''The Journal of Philosophy'', v. 42, n. 14. (July 5, 1945), pp. 378–383. *Peirce, C. S., '' Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Volumes V and VI: Pragmatism and Pragmaticism and Scientific Metaphysics'', editors: Hartshorne and Weiss, Harvard University Press, January 1935, *Reynolds, Andrew, ''Peirce's Scientific Metaphysics'', Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 2002,

The thesis

Underpinnings

Evolution

See also

Notes

References

Further reading