Abstract
In this paper, I present a detailed interpretation of Peirce’s cosmogony about the origin of the universe and its evolutionary development. This involves bringing together and making sense of Peirce’s disconnected statements on cosmology, which are scattered throughout his writings and which sometimes employ different terminologies. Furthermore, it shall involve identifying the categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness that govern its conceptual structure, and ultimately the metaphysical structure of the universe to which it refers. Attending to the categories at play here reveals the basic “logic” of Peirce’s theory from which its rational coherence is discernable. As such, it may be argued that given the inherent logic of his position, Peirce’s theory amounts to a reasonable abduction, as well as one that possesses some unique theoretical merits in comparison to other alternative cosmogonies that have been proposed in the history of philosophy and modern astronomy.