4i8 The Inward Urge to Change 



he consider the phenomena as beyond uniform law, or as 

 miracles. 



In the same way we find that carbon compounds behave 

 in protoplasm as they do in test-tubes, with something new 

 intervening. The uniformities in organism transcend the 

 laws of physics and chemistry, yet without violating them. 

 We find that in stimulus and response matter and energy 

 behave as they do in artificial, lifeless systems, but that some- 

 thing new appears which is not present in the latter. The 

 uniformities in the nervous system transcend the laws of 

 lifeless matter and energy but do not contradict them. It 

 is by the same token unnecessary to invoke a principle that 

 reaches beyond orderly cause-and-effect action. 



If then we accept the principle of uniform causation, 

 that is all that the " mechanistic " explanations need imply 

 — the establishment of working principles of cause and effect 

 at any level, or in regard to any order of being. If we were 

 as sure of the " law of supply and demand " as we are of 

 the " law of multiple proportion " in chemistry, or of the 

 " law of hybrid segregation " in biology, we could deal with 

 certain economic processes mechanistically, and we could 

 explain certain social phenomena mechanistically. Similarly 

 in psychology, many of the " laws " are at best approxima- 

 tions to sound generalizations. In so far, however, as they 

 are sound we can apply them in a strictly uniformitarian 

 manner to the explanation of phenomena: and we should not 

 in that case have to apologize for assuming or for ignoring 

 the " soul." 



Emergence and Missing Links 



The concept of emergence accords recognition to differ- 

 ent orders of being, each with its own peculiarities of struc- 

 ture and behavior, with its own uniformities or laws. This 

 concept thus enables us to think of the sequence of events 

 as evolntionary in the scientific sense of orderly and uni- 

 formitarian. It enables us also to think of the sequence of 



