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110 5 CosmologyandSynechism Metaphorically speaking, our universe is animated by a life urge. Initially it had exactly the right conditions to produce organization, complexity, and ultimately life. Throughout its history, the urge has done just that. Hubert Reeves (1991, 6) In the last chapter, we were concerned with seeing whether Peirce had managed to reconcile the purposeless but directed behavior of stochastic systems with his neo-Lamarckian theory of evolution (agapasm). We saw how he attempted to trace a kind of selective principle at the molecular level of protoplasm, which would allow him to identify nutrition with the agapistic idea that growth or evolution occurs through the development of the organism from within, by the incorporation of material from without. We also noted Murphey’s reservations about the divergence that had opened up between the immediate goal of inquiry and the ultimate goal of the universal mind. Individual organisms and minds must, if they are to survive, adapt themselves to their environments. It is really, then, the environment that determines the direction of evolution, not the mind or organism.1 What Peirce needed was some assurance that the universe was developing in a specific direction and according to its own purposes. Murphey (Flower and Murphey, 1977, 616) points out that interpreting the cosmology along Lamarckian lines does not help at all, because even according to the Lamarckian theory—despite its teleological bent—it is still the environment that really determines the direction of evolution. On this account, organisms merely take the initiative to adapt themselves, rather than allow the environment to select which of them will survive (as the Darwinian theory maintains ). And in what sense, Murphey asks (1993, 350), can we talk about the environment of the entire universe?2 Whatever it is that is Cosmology and Synechism 111 driving the development of the universal mind must be internal to it. The universe as a whole does not occupy an environment in the same way as an organism does. But because the development of the universal mind and the development of individual minds are supposed to be the same (i.e., both follow the processes of inquiry), if we can identify the intrinsic goal of inquiry we will have also identified the intrinsic goal of evolution. At the same time, Murphey writes (1993, 361f), Peirce began to see the need for more than a merely descriptive and psychologistic theory of logic, so that around the turn of the nineteenth century he began to develop the thesis that logic is based on ethics, and ethics in turn on aesthetics. Logic may tell us how to proceed on the assumption that we want to discover truth. But it cannot tell us why we ought to pursue truth. For that, we must turn to ethics. But ethics, according to Peirce, is the science of directing behavior toward goals in general (1.611ff., 2.198, 5.130ff.). Because ethics is concerned only with goal-directed behavior in general, it cannot tell us which goals we ought to pursue . Discernment of which goals we ought to pursue requires a study of those things which have inherent value and desirability. This, for Peirce, is the domain of aesthetics (1.191, 1.612ff., 2.199). Ultimately, Murphey explains (1977, 617–18), Peirce arrived at the conclusion that the summum bonum is a form of beauty. Consequently , the goal of inquiry and of evolution is a state of maximum beauty; more specifically, it is a state of perfectly harmonious symmetry . From the perspective of inquiry, this is a state of perfect regularity , order, and rationality. It is the lure of this final state, only ever present as a vague idea at any given time, that urges mind on in its struggle and development. Peirce also gave an alternative description of this summum bonum in terms of “logical goodness.” The evolutionary aspect of this conception is clearly displayed in the following passage from his 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism: We may now profitably ask ourselves what logical goodness is. We have seen that any kind of goodness consists in the adaptation of its subject to its end. . . . But the saving truth is that there is a Thirdness in experience , an element of Reasonableness to which we can train our own reason to conform more and more. If this were not the case there could be no such thing as logical goodness or badness; and therefore we need [3.144.124.232] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 13:19...

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