TYCHISM RAISES ITS PONDEROUS HEAD

CP 5.597. Auguste Comte, at the other extreme, would condemn every theory that was not "verifiable." Like the majority of Comte's ideas, this is a bad interpretation of a truth. An explanatory hypothesis, that is to say, a conception which does not limit its purpose to enabling the mind to grasp into one a variety of facts, but which seeks to connect those facts with our general conceptions of the universe, ought, in one sense, to be verifiable; that is to say, it ought to be little more than a ligament of numberless possible predictions concerning future experience, so that if they fail, it fails. Thus, when Schliemann entertained the hypothesis that there really had been a city of Troy and a Trojan War, this meant to his mind among other things that when he should come to make excavations at Hissarlik he would probably find remains of a city with evidences of a civilization more or less answering to the descriptions of the Iliad, and which would correspond with other probable finds at Mycenae, Ithaca, and elsewhere. So understood, Comte's maxim is sound. Nothing but that is an explanatory hypothesis. But Comte's own notion of a verifiable hypothesis was that it must not suppose anything that you are not able directly to observe. From such a rule it would be fair to infer that he would permit Mr. Schliemann to suppose he was going to find arms and utensils at Hissarlik, but would forbid him to suppose that they were either made or used by any human being, since no such beings could ever be detected by direct percept. He ought on the same principle to forbid us to suppose that a fossil skeleton had ever belonged to a living ichthyosaurus. This seems to be substantially the opinion of M. Poincaré at this day. The same doctrine would forbid us to believe in our memory of what happened at dinnertime today. I have for many years been an adherent of what is technically called Common Sense in philosophy, myself; and do not think that my Tychistic opinions conflict with that position; but I nevertheless think that such theories as that of Comte and Poincaré about verifiable hypotheses frequently deserve the most serious consideration; and the examination of them is never lost time; for it brings lessons not otherwise so easily learned. Of course with memory would have to go all opinions about everything not at this moment before our senses. You must not believe that you hear me speaking to you, but only that you hear certain sounds while you see before you a spot of black, white, and flesh color; and those sounds somehow seem to suggest certain ideas which you must not connect at all with the black and white spot. A man would have to devote years to training his mind to such habits of thought, and even then it is doubtful whether it would be possible. And what would be gained? If it would alter our beliefs as to what our sensuous experience is going to be, it would certainly be a change for the worse, since we do not find ourselves disappointed in any expectations due to common sense beliefs. If on the other hand it would not make any such difference, as I suppose it would not, why not allow us the harmless convenience of believing in these fictions, if they be fictions? Decidedly we must be allowed these ideas, if only as cement for the matter of our sensations. At the same time, I protest that such permission would not be at all enough. Comte, Poincaré, and Karl Pearson take what they consider to be the first impressions of sense, but which are really nothing of the sort, but are percepts that are products of psychical operations, and they separate these from all the intellectual part of our knowledge, and arbitrarily call the first real and the second fictions. These two words real and fictive bear no significations whatever except as marks of good and bad. But the truth is that what they call bad or fictitious, or subjective, the intellectual part of our knowledge, comprises all that is valuable on its own account, while what they mark good, or real, or objective, is nothing but the pretty vessel that carries the precious thought. END

Tychism is simply based on chance or a doctrine of chance. This is fundamental to Peirce -- and to life as well and quantum in fact.

I make chance to be a form of freedom, a necessary flexibility which has as its cause not chance as much as thoughtfulness or taking thought. Peirce is not far from agreement with this.