Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
6.6 Determination in Finious Processes
Thomas L. Short (
2007
, 105-107) observed that the narrowness of the contemporary
philosophic understanding of causation (a baleful influence, he says, of David
Hume
s ghost) has had unfortunate effects—but he also called attention to an
alternative understanding of causality that Peirce developed.
7
The kinds of interaction that classical mechanics deals with have time-reversal
symmetry (viewers have no way of deciding whether a video of billiard-ball
collisions is running forward or backward). But natural processes often
proceed
in one direction only
. Spark-induced explosion of a mixture of H
2
and O
2
loudly
and rapidly produces H
2
O vapor: the reverse reaction is unobservable. Peirce calls
such unidirectional processes
finious
; Short suggests the designation
anisotropic
;
chemists call such changes
irreversible
. Pierce held that in irreversible processes an
alternate kind of causal process is of central importance—“that mode of bringing
facts about according to which a general description of result is made to come
about, quite irrespective of any compulsion for it to come about in this or that
particular way; although the means may be adapted to the end” (CP 1.211).
This corresponds to understanding a cause as reason rather than as agent. Peirce
considered that Darwin
'
s account of the origin of biological species exemplifies this
alternative mode of result-determination.
Natural selection gradually (and irreversibly) eliminates whichever chara-
cteristics of organisms are not suited to the conditions that prevail. Such
reduction (culling) of possibilities eventually produces one particular determinate
result—which one of the many possible outcomes is actually produced depends
on contingencies of culling rather than only (or mainly) on actions of underlying
agents.
...
there remains little doubt that the Darwinian theory indicates a real cause, which tends
to adapt animal and vegetable forms to their environment. A very remarkable feature of it is
that it shows how merely fortuitous variations of individuals together with merely fortu-
itous mishaps to them would, under the action of heredity, result, not in mere irregularity,
nor even in a statistical constancy, but in continual and indefinite progress toward a better
adaptation of means to ends (CP 7.395).
'
Natural selection works in such a way as to produce adaptation of life-forms to their
circumstances: this general aim does not determine in what particular way it is to be
brought about, but only that the result shall have a certain general character. The general
result may be brought about at one time in one way, and at another time in another way
(CP 1.211).
Peirce considers that each effective selection-criterion is a
general
rather than
a
particular
(a universal rather than a substance). Each such criterion might be
7
See also Reynolds
2002
.
