CRITICISMS AND DIFFICULTIES 3I 



Let us take an example. If heredity depended on the play 

 of a considerable number of identical elements, there would 

 be no problem. The laws of chance would apply, excluding 

 all sudden mutations, or rather rendering them improbable. 

 The apparition of mutations seems to show on the contrary 

 that we are in the presence of too feeble a number of elements. 

 It is an analogous case to that of tiny communicating vases 

 containing a few molecules of gas. The displacement of one 

 single molecule destroys the statistical result. Boyle's law no 

 longer applies. The second law of thermo-dynamics is upset. 

 So that the real and greatest intellectual problem of man, 

 which covers all the problems of life, can actually be reduced 

 to a very simple question: How is order born of disorder? 

 By 'order' we mean the natural sequence of perceptible 

 phenomena. 



Let us now leave this somewhat hallucinating realm, 

 admirably evoked in the last chapter of Sir James Jeans' 

 The Mysterious Universe, where all reaUty is reduced to groups 



tremendous number of particles that the action of one isolated 

 elementary particle has absolutely no value with respect to the 

 phenomenon as a whole. It is in this sense that we said that practi- 

 cally there was nothing changed. We are incapable of predicting the 

 future of one particle, but there are so many of them that the calcula- 

 tion of probabilities enables us to establish with a very great degree 

 of approximation the probable statistical result of the sum of their 

 individual actions (kinetic theory of gases, for example) as revealed by 

 experiments. In the same way an insurance company is incapable of 

 predicting which of the insured houses will be burned or which client 

 will die. The only thing which interests it "is the annual percentage 

 of each disaster, percentage which is calculated from the statistics of 

 the preceding years. It is thus possible with a small sum to cover 

 the risks representing a much larger amount. This enables one to 

 understand how chance can give birth to precise laws, and one compre- 

 hends also why it is necessary that chance alone should determine 

 the fate of each individual, for if a new element enters into play — for 

 instance a world-wide cataclysm (epidemic, earthquake) — which 

 superimposes itself on normal chances of individual accidents, the law 

 of statistics no longer applies and the company fails. That is the 

 so-called 'fluctuation'. 



