Abstract
On at least three different occasions, Peirce insisted on the necessity to admit the cyclical, i.e. self-returning nature of time (1.274, 1.498 and 6.210). This view is altogether incompatible with one essential aspect of his philosophy, i.e. with his tychism which unambiguously rejected the rigorous determinism of classical science; but this, as we shall see, was one of the basic assumptions of the cyclical theory of time. The fact that Peirce did not mention it, shows that he failed to grasp the full meaning of the cyclical theory of time; and this undoubtedly explains why his own arguments in favor of this theory are so obscure and unconvincing. (I shall return to his arguments at the end of this paper.)
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Notes
Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of Stoics,tr. by Merton Dagut, New York, 1956, Ch. 8.
The Will to Power, The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche,Edinburgh and London, 1913, Vol. IX, p. 430.
Hans Reichenbach, The Direction of Time,University of California Press, 1956, p. 111.
In particular in The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics,Princeton, 1969, chs. XIV, XV.
Jean Piaget, L’Introduction â la epistemologie génetique,Paris 1974, pp. 204–5; M. t3apek, “The Significance of Piaget’s Researches on the Psychogenesis of Atomism,” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science,Vol. VIII (1971), pp. 446–45 5.
Bas C. Van Fraassen, “ 6apek on Eternal Recurrence” The Journal of Philosophy,Vol. LIX, pp. 371–75.
Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist,The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. VIII, Evanston 1949, p. 63.
M. (Vapek, op. cit,pp. 230–243: cf. also my article “The Fiction of Instants,” in Studium generale,Vol. 24 (171), pp. 31–43.
Thomas A. Goudge, The Thought of C. S. Peirce, Toronto, 1950, p. 244; Murray C. Murphy, The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy ( Cambridge, Mass. 1961 ), pp. 388–89.
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Čapek, M. (1991). Eternal Recurrence — Once More. In: The New Aspects of Time. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 125. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2123-8_13
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