9 o "BECOMING" 



I am afraid that the average reader will feel impa- 

 tient with the long-winded discussion I am about to give 

 concerning the dynamic character of the external world. 

 "What is all the bother about? Why not make at once 

 the hypothesis that 'becoming' is a kind of one-way 

 texture involved fundamentally in the structure of 

 Nature? The mind is cognisant of this texture (as it is 

 cognisant of other features of the physical world) and 

 apprehends it as the passing on of time — a fairly correct 

 appreciation of its actual nature. As a result of this 

 one-way texture the random element increases steadily 

 in the direction of the grain, and thus conveniendy 

 provides the physicist with an experimental criterion for 

 determining the way of the grain; but it is the grain 

 and not this particular consequence of it which is the 

 direct physical counterpart of 'becoming'. It may be 

 difficult to find a rigorous proof of this hypothesis; but 

 after all we have generally to be content with hypotheses 

 that rest only on plausibility." 



This is in fact the kind of idea which I wish to 

 advocate; but the "average reader" has probably not 

 appreciated that before the physicist can admit it, a 

 delicate situation concerning the limits of scientific 

 method and the underlying basis of physical law has to 

 be faced. It is one thing to introduce a plausible 

 hypothesis in order to explain observational phenomena; 

 it is another thing to introduce it in order to give the 

 world outside us a significant or purposive meaning, 

 however strongly that meaning may be insisted on by 

 something in our conscious nature. From the side of 

 scientific investigation we recognise only the progressive 

 change in the random element from the end of the world 

 with least randomness to the end with most; that in itself 

 gives no ground for suspecting any kind of dynamical 



