Let us consider some of the entries upon the organon "121 General Causes of and Influences Upon Paths" (vide).

The first such cause or influence is AFFINITIES.

Judging from the dictionary, by "affinities" might be meant: natural attraction to, liking for, or tendency toward (something); homology-or possession of common features as a result of descent or derivation from an identical or analogous ancestor or antecedent; resemblance-even in the whole plan of structure-between or among things owing to community of origin. (Here I have actually selected, adapted, and supplemented definitions that appear in Webster's Third; but further changes could and should be made in future.) -

Thus people may marry or remarry as a result of some sort of affinity, They may be attracted to the same climate or picturesque valley. They may be drawn together because their personalities form complementary opposites. People who grew up in the same part of a nation may gravitate together even after living in some other region for many years.

The second list in the entry is AFTEREFFECTS, TRACES, OR MEMORY.

It has been conjectured that some lightning bolts may be caused or triggered by electrons retracing the ionization path left in the atmosphere by a cosmic ray. Various exotic particles that have been, or may yet be, hypothesized to exist could also leave peculiar paths or induce anomalous effects: free quarks with fractional charge, antimatter micrometeorites, and magnetic monopoles leap to mind-possibly in connection with such odd lightning as ball, bead, rocket, rectilinear, colored, clear-sky, and superbolt lightning.

Ephemeral streams reform in gullies sculpted by past floods. Caves often develop along preexisting faults, joints, strata, and weaknesses as old as the host rock itself , Novel thoughts retrace, in whole or part, old paths in the mind or brain.

Many modern superhighways retrace the paths of former highways built along countian dirt roads enlarged from footpaths of early settlers derived from Indian trails that followed deer paths evolved from the favored meuses of small mammals which themselves might have been inspired by the accidental multitudinous crisscrosses of fallen trees (along the paths of freak storms).

Many-body systems may conceivably prosecute paths that in some sense integrate-or possibly differentiate-the entire matrix of historic paths abiding as some arbitrarily odd manner of memory.

Paths may also be caused or influenced by ANALOGIES.

That is, the existence of similarities, analogies, or commonalities between or among things or processes can cause or influence paths.

Paths will one day form over the surface of the Moon-as travel ways- in par because of the countless topographic and geologic features that it shares with the surface of the Earth.

Infective and epidemic pathogenic organisms have evolved because of the vast number of anatomo-physiologic paths that all bionts or taxa share as potential hosts.

Of course this entry can also be understood as simply referring to the fact that there must exist analogies between the diverse causes of paths that can be used to describe and classify paths.

A fourth potential cause of or influence upon paths is the ANASTOMOSIS OF [LINES, EDGES, CYLINDERS, OR WAVES].

By such anastomosis is meant that;the objects referred to may divide-even subdivide-and reunite once or repeatedly; or may be similarly anastomosed by extrinsic interconnections; or may simply be connected unidirectionally.

If a vessel develops extensive self-anastomoses, flow through it may be so enhanced-or possibly so retarded-as to cause it to virtually or literally become a different type of path or a path for something different (that travels via it).

Certainly the development of anastomoses between paths that at first are merely entangled can give rise to additional and qualitatively novel paths.

Groundwater may be flowing independently through two porous strata that are separated by an unbroken impermeable stratum. Failure of the latter can give rise to an interflow path.

A toxin introduced into the body by a snake's bite may hypothetically pursue an accelerated, ubiquitous, and more injurious path to tissues because of circulatory anastomoses.

A detective trying to solve a crime may be helped by the existence of abstract or physical anastomoses between different trails of evidence he is following-anastomoses that serve to corroborate, correct, and collimate clues and ideas, that provide parallaxes and shortcuts.