Pragmatism and Chance Part 1: the Problem of Greeks Sources of Tychism

Abstract

In the Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of chance, the concept of chance has two distinct but complementary meanings in his metaphysics: (i) mathematical chance, originated in the theory of probabilities and that provides one of the vectors of his cosmology; and (ii) absolute chance, which maintains the chance as real property of world and as lawlessness or violation of Laws of Nature. This absolute chance is the core of his doctrine of tychism, whose name is derived from the Greek tyché. The aim of this article, divided into two parts, is demonstrated how the absolute chance’s notion based the Peirce’ pragmatistic method and connected, this way, metaphysics and pragmatism. In this first part of article, we investigated the influences of tychism: while mathematical chance have parameters in the statistical physics and evolutionary theory of the 19th century, the absolute chance account with two recognized sources in Greek philosophy, that Peirce is dedicated for to the studies from 1890: the theory of accidental causes, in Aristotle’s book Physic, and the Epicurean’s hypothesis of clinamen, as exposed by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura. The problem is that both Greeks sources provides only partial and weak basis for a large conception of chance adopted by Peirce. We concluded that is the Aristotle’s logical concept of real possibility that will not only sustain the tychism but connected the doctrine with classical tradition of peircean pragmatism.