Abstract

In Time Reborn and elsewhere physicist Lee Smolin identifies Peirce as a precursor to his view that natural laws evolved, a view that runs counter the received opinion within physics that time isn’t real. After discussing Smolin’s arguments for the reality of time, two approaches advoacated by Smolin –cosmological natural selection and Quantum Energetic Causal Set Theory– are discussed in the context of Peirce’s cosmology. It is shown that Peirce’s approach provides a possible ground for a physical theory like Quantum Energetic Causal Set Theory, opening the way for a full-fledged cosmology that does justice to contemporary physics.