SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE. 217 



little ones, become quite intelligible. And, in fact, the honor of the 

 paternity of those remarkable ideas which come into full flower in the 

 preacher's discourse must, so far as my imperfect knowledge goes, be 

 attributed to the author of the " Vestiges." 



But the author of the " Vestiges " is not the only writer who is 

 responsible for the current pseudo-scientific mystifications which hang 

 about the term " law." When I wrote my paper about " Scientific 

 and Pseudo-Scientific Realism," I had not read a work by the Duke of 

 Argyll, "The Reign of Law," which, I believe, has enjoyed, possibly 

 still enjoys, a wide-spread popularity. But the vivacity of the duke's 

 attack led me to think it possible that criticisms directed elsewhere 

 might have come home to him. And, in fact, I find that the second 

 chapter of the work in question, which is entitled " Law ; its Defini- 

 tions," is, from my point of view, a sort of " summa " of pseudo-scien- 

 tific philosophy. It will be worth while to examine it in some detail. 



In the first place, it is to be noted that the author of the " Reign 

 of Law " admits that " law," in many cases, means nothing more than 

 the statement of the order in which facts occur, or, as he says, " an 

 observed order of facts " (p. 66). But his appreciation of the value 

 of accuracy of expression does not hinder him from adding, almost 

 in the same breath, " In this sense the laws of Nature are simply those 

 facts of Nature which recur according to rule " (p. 66). Thus " laws," 

 which were rightly said to be the statement of an order of facts in 

 one paragraph, are declared to be the facts themselves in the next. 



We are next told that, though it may be customary and permis- 

 sible to use " law " in the sense of a statement of the order of facts, 

 this is a low use of the word ; and indeed, two pages farther on, the 

 writer, flatly contradicting himself, altogether denies its admissi- 

 bility : 



An observed order of facts, to be entitled to the rank of a law, must be an 

 order so constant and uniform as to indicate necessity, and necessity can only 

 arise out of the action of some compelling force (p. 68). 



This is undoubtedly one of the most singular propositions that I have 

 ever met with in a professedly scientific work, and its rarity is embel- 

 lished by another direct self-contradiction which it implies. For, on 

 the preceding page (67), when the Duke of Argyll is speaking of the 

 laws of Kepler, which he admits to be laws, and which are types of 

 that which men of science understand by " laws," he says that they 

 are "simply and purely an order of facts." Moreover, he adds, "A 

 very large proportion of the laws of every science are laws of this kind 

 and in this sense." 



If, according to the Duke of Argyll's admission, law is understood 

 in this sense, thus widely and constantly, by scientific authorities, 

 where is the justification for his unqualified assertion that such state- 

 ments of the observed order of facts are not " entitled to the rank " of 

 laws? 



