| Sumario: | This paper offers a new interpretation of a puzzling passage in Charles S. Peirce's 1892 essay "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined" (DNE), where he speaks of the "inevitable consequences" of the hypothesis of tychism that purportedly agree with observed facts. I argue that in this passage, Peirce is alluding to his astronomical work attempting to determine the curvature of space , which he was carrying out at the same time as writing DNE. By highlighting a hitherto unnoticed link between tychism and the geometry of space, I show why Peirce should have regarded these investigations as lending empirical support to his anti-deterministic doctrine. This connection will serve to illuminate one specific aspect of the impact that non-Euclidean geometry had on Peirce's philosophy—an influence that, despite its significance, has remained largely unexplored.
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