CHAPTER XVI 



LAW, CAUSE 



The concepts to be discussed in this chapter occupy a 

 slightly different position in the table of the sciences. They 

 function not explicitly, as do the concepts already examined, 

 but implicitly. Number, order, quantity, time, space, force, 

 motion, and matter — each of these concepts constitutes, 

 with the possible exception of time, the subject matter of 

 one or more of the special sciences. Hence, in each of these 

 cases the scientist tells — not always in clear terms, to be 

 sure — what he means by the concept in question. A con- 

 tinuation of this type of discussion would require similar 

 examination of the concepts of life and mind, which con- 

 stitute the basic notions of the biological and psychological, 

 or humanistic, sciences. Since the present book makes no 

 claim to completeness, and since the concepts in these more 

 complex sciences are even more controversial as to meaning 

 and empirical reference than in the cases of the concepts 

 already examined, the analysis of the explicit concepts will 

 stop at this point. But there runs through the sciences a 

 certain group of basic concepts expressive rather of the 

 structure than of the content of the investigations — concepts 

 which are not, as a rule, subjected to critical examination 

 by the scientists who use them. Typical among such con- 

 cepts are the following: event, quality, relation, operation, 

 uniformity, objectivity, change, symbol, hypothesis, experi- 

 ment, law, and cause. Some of these concepts have already 

 been subjected to critical examination in Part I, and the 

 present chapter might well have occurred in that context. 

 However, the concepts of law and cause, intimately associated 

 as they are with such notions as measurement, time, space, 

 and force, are better examined in the discussion context of 

 these latter notions. The present chapter will approach these 



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