  Although pathway-specific kinetic theories are fundamentally important to
describe and under- stand reversible polymerisation kinetics, they come in
principle at a cost of having a large number of system-specific parameters.
Here, we construct a dynamical Landau theory to describe the kinetics of
activated linear supramolecular self-assembly, which drastically reduces the
number of parameters and still describes most of the interesting and generic
behavior of the system in hand. This phenomenological approach hinges on the
fact that if nucleated, the polymerisation transition resembles a phase
transition. We are able to describe hysteresis, overshooting, undershooting and
the existence of a lag time before polymerisation takes o?, and pinpoint the
conditions required for observing these types of phenomenon in the assembly and
disassembly kinetics. We argue that the phenomenological kinetic parameter in
our theory is a pathway controller, i.e., it controls the relative weights of
the molecular pathways through which self-assembly takes place.
