C. S. PEIRCE ON THE LIMITATIONS OF THE LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

CP 6.72. ... almost all the phenomena of bodies here on earth which attract our familiar notice are non-conservative, that is, are inexplicable by means of the Law of the Conservation of Energy. For they are actions which cannot be reversed. In the language of physics they are irreversible. Such, for instance, is birth, growth, life. Such is all motion resisted by friction or by the viscosity of fluids, as all terrestrial motion is. Such is the conduction of heat, combustion, capillarity, diffusion of fluids. Such is the thunder bolt, the production of high colors by a prism, the flow of rivers, the formations of bars at their mouths, the wearing of their channels; in short, substantially everything that ordinary experience reveals, except the motions of the stars. And even those we do not see to be reversed, though we may well believe them reversible. About the only familiar actions which appear to sense reversible are the motion of a projectile, the bending of a bow or other spring, a freely swinging pendulum, a telephone, a microphone, a galvanic battery, and a dynamo. And all but two of these are unfamiliar to man in his early development. No wonder the doctrine of the conservation of energy was a late discovery. END

Peirce offers a not-overly-gentle reminder to his native world of science that it is fallible and in some cases confronted with glaring
anomalies. If he strives for a metaphysics that can help explain science, he also wants a science that acknowledges its own limitations.