194 THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE 



irrelevant to the conception of emergence I have sketched. From 

 such emergence I seek not the prediction of quahties or phenomena 

 unhke any I have previously known to exist but, on the contrary, 

 explanation of known qualities or phenomena for the existence of 

 which I seek some "sufficient reason." This is, I think, just the sense 

 in which corpuscular hypotheses may be said to explain qualitative 

 change. They sketch for us mechanisms of change involving die col- 

 lective deportment {e.g., relative displacements) in certain contexts 

 of certain unchanging entities. So taught to understand how change 

 may come about, we grasp a "sufficient reason" we may call the 

 cause of change. And with that dread word we enter now a new area 

 of discourse. 



The Principle of Determinism, and Causality 



Though treated here as a separate principle, determinism may per- 

 haps be regarded as further corollary to the principle of continuity. 

 The argument might run thus: Acting on the principle of dissolu- 

 bility, we suppose the condition or state of a finite system adequately 

 defined by specification of a small number of parameters. If a state 

 A of some such system is forever succeeded by state A, we have the 

 perfect continuity of identity. However, if instead state A is once 

 succeeded by some other state B, we expect to find continuity main- 

 tained at least to the extent that, in other such systems, in other times 

 and places, state A will ahcays be succeeded by state B. The princi- 

 ple of determinism asserts that this element of continuity will be 

 found if "proper" specifications of the states are given. We then at- 

 tack the problem of establishing such specifications: each particular 

 change we would show determined by a distinct antecedent state 

 recognizable in advance of the event. 



When change occurs state B is the effect and, in whole or in some 

 part, state A is the cause. But the idea of causality transcends any 

 such trivial matter of naming and, however closely associated with 

 the idea of determinism, it transcends that as well. Establishment of 

 continuity in determinism satisfies the Egyptian quest for order that 

 change may be rendered predictable. But the causal concept is 

 rooted in the deeper and more difficult Greek quest, for understand- 

 ing, broached in the principle of intelligibility. That is, if determin- 

 ism expresses the conformity of phenomena to laws, in a universe 



