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called a
controlling general
—an outcome-determining universal. By this means
'
—closures of relationships that have the property of engendering future
versions of the same closures—would have result-shaping effects, although they
would not be agents. Peirce
structures
'
s theory featured grounding
causality by universals. According to this view, natural selection operates to
amplify those features of a system that correspond to stability, under the conditions
that prevail. Since organisms that pass the selection test may have many differences
that are irrelevant to that test, the condition of persistence that this criterion involves
is not a specific individual requirement but a rather more or less vague general
condition—a universal.
In this way, a universal may have efficacy that is
'
s interpretation of Darwin
'
in a broad sense.
In other words, if a certain state-of-affairs results from
selection
on the basis of
some criterion then that criterion (a universal) is a determinant (a cause in a general
sense) of the state of affairs. To the extent that closure of a network of relationships
of components is a prerequisite for the stability of entities, that closure is also a
necessary determinant
of that states of affairs
8
that it engenders. In order for
recognizing anisotropic or finious determination, some temporal process must
restrict the range of possible future states open to a system, blocking some but
not others. If such an
equivalent to selection
accounts for the existence of a
structure, then that structure may properly be termed a determinant—a cause in a
sense that is more general than philosophers recognize.
9
Several detailed mechanisms may achieve similar or equivalent results.
For each conceivable way of achieving a stable dynamic coherence which
works well (under the conditions which prevail) many imaginable variant
arrangements would also succeed—but a much larger number of possible varia-
tions would not work successfully. Systems complex enough to contain one
accessible route to closure typically containmanysuchwaystoachievedynamic
stability (Kauffman
1993
,
1995
). In addition, if a viable dynamic coherence does
exist, it turns out that the same coherence may be reached by several diverse
historical routes. Commonly observed biological convergence (
causal
'
'
)—
genetically unrelated species have arrived at similar biological structures through
vastly different evolutionary pathways
10
—suggests that long-term viability is rare
among possibilities.
homoplasy
'
'
8
Bishop
s(
2012
) account of the philosophic significance of nonlinear dynamics is consistent with
this interpretation.
9
This summary avoids the designation
'
that Peirce used for this mode of influ-
ence—in order to forestall confusion of reason with purpose, and to discourage the erroneous
notion that reasons must be purposes of conscious agents.
10
For instance, the fossil record demonstrates apparently-identical saber-toothed species of both
mammals and marsupials (Conway Morris
2003
).
final causality
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'
