146 THE ANATOMY OF SCIENCE 



observe the weight. We may look into the box 

 millions of times and always find the weight 

 upon the floor, and we then state this to be a law 

 of nature. But the time will come when we look 

 in and find the weight some distance from the 

 floor. It will not happen often, but we can cal- 

 culate with a high degree of accuracy the 

 chance of finding it, let us say, ten centimeters 

 or more from the floor. This chance is so very 

 small that I cannot express it in any ordinary 

 way. We state chances as fractions, but to de- 

 note this chance I should have to put down a 

 decimal point and zero after zero, and would 

 spend my whole lifetime before I could write 

 dowa a number not a zero. But the calculation 

 is none the less exact. 



The chance becomes larger if I consider 

 smaller weights and lesser heights from the 

 floor. Let the height be one hundred million 

 times as small and the weight also one hundred 

 million times as small, and then the calculation 

 shows that if we look in every second we shall 

 find the weight as far off the floor as this 6.32 

 times in every million years. If you bet five to 

 one on the appearance of this phenomenon in a 

 million ^^ears you might lose at first, but would 

 come out ahead in the long run. 



