66 THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 



from supernatural) causes— and so arrive at the resolute naturalism 

 characteristic of the best Greek thought. 



Such naturalism in turn profoundly affects our view of the princi- 

 ple of determinism; for, after all, that principle may be viewed in 

 many unequally "respectable" ways. A malignant demon, or a witch's 

 curse, may reasonably be postulated as the hidden determinant of a 

 death for which no overt determinant can be detected. Hard-headed 

 Greek potters attached grotesque masks to their kilns, to frighten 

 away unseen demons postulated to account for the otherwise inex- 

 plicable failure of certain entire firings. The idea of determinism may 

 even be made into an argument for divination, as shown in the expo- 

 sition of Stoic doctrine quoted by Sambursky: 



... in every field of enquiry great length of time employed in con- 

 tinued observation begets an extraordinary fund of [common-sense] 

 knowledge, which . . . makes it clear what efl^eet follows any given 

 cause, and what sign precedes any given event. . . . the universe 

 was so created that certain results would be preceded by certain signs, 

 which are given sometimes by entrails and by birds, sometimes by 

 lightnings, by portents and by stars, sometimes by dreams, and 

 sometimes by utterances of persons in a frenzy. And these signs do 

 not often deceive the persons who observe them properly. If prophe- 

 cies, based on erroneous deductions and interpretation, turn out to be 

 false, the fault is not chargeable to the signs but to the lack of skill 

 in the intei^preters. 



The failures of divination here receive the treatment we ourselves 

 give to, say, failures of the conservation of mass in the experiments of 

 novice chemists. We take the reliability of the conservation law as a 

 matter of principle; just so one can take divination also as of prin- 

 ciple. Nothing about the principle of determinism as such thus en- 

 forces rejection of divination, and what ive regard as similar supersti- 

 tions. From the Greek postulate of intelligibilit}% however, there can 

 arise rejection of divination: we reject as inadequate a determinist 

 order we cannot understand. 



The multi-faceted principle of intelligibility, elsewhere treated at 

 length, underlies the entire attempt to construct theoretic explana- 

 tions of colligative relations. Today notable successes already won in 

 such construction encourage confidence in the principle— which we 

 take wholly for granted. But for the Greeks the principle was no more 

 than a daring assumption— and we honor them most for that indomi- 



