Touched by Tyche? An Argument for Agnosticism on the Question of Absolute Chance

Abstract

Charles Sanders Peirce felt strongly that absolute chance, "tychism", played a part in the world. He believed just as forcefully that the world had a tendency to take on habits and to become lawful, and furthermore that world of principled habits is understandable even though it may require an infinite amount of time to succeed in the enterprise of gaining knowledge of it. This paper questions his optmism in these beliefs. Using a foundation in systems theory, and considering the cosmos to be a special kind of system, I argue that it is impossible either from ontological or epistemological grounds, to come to a settled understanding ot the questions of absolute chance or the evolution toward complete knowledge. Instead, we must accept an agnostic view on the matter, admitting the possibility of tychism and Peircean evolutionaqy cosmology, as simply one scenario of many possible realities, none of wich can be determined.