1902] BROOKS— IS SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM FATALISM ? 145 



have been shown by Schiff, Vulpian and Philipeaux to follow the 

 section of the nerve supply, cannot be regarded as an analogous 

 process and are not invariable. 



Two views suggest themselves : Osteitis deformans may be due to 



1. Infection by some organism, to the action of which bone 

 tissue is especially liable ; or, 



2. To the default of some physiological principle which nor- 

 mally regulates and limits the growth of bone. 



Either of these views may serve as a working hypothesis for 

 investigations into the cause of the disease. 



This affection has points of similarity with osteomalacia, leonti- 

 asis ossea, acromegaly, gigantism, arthritis deformans and rickets, 

 but differs from them all in essential particulars. 



No treatment has been of any service in arresting the progress of 

 the disease. 



15 SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM FATALISM? 



A ONE-MINUTE PAPER. 

 BY WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS. 



i^Read April 4, 1902.) 



Berkeley pointed out long ago that all the phenomena in nature 

 may be expressed in terms of motion. The progress of science is 

 teaching us this truth, and is thus bringing us to a point of view 

 which Hume has indicated in these words: *'The necessity of any 

 action, either of body or of mind, is not in the object which ex- 

 hibits the action, but in the spectator." 



Scientific predictions are based upon our well-founded confidence 

 that the order which we have discovered in nature in the past will 

 continue in the future ; but physical analysis neither answers nor 

 asks why nature should be orderly, or what has made it so. For its 

 purposes, the notions of agency and efficiency and causation are 

 irrelevant and useless, because the notion of necessity is something 

 that we ourselves project into nature and not anything that we find 

 in nature. 



If we agree with Hume, as I think we must, does not his state- 

 ment carry with it, as its complement and counterpart, a declara- 

 tion to this effect : Freedom in willing and doing, if there be such 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SCO. XLT. 169. J. PRINTED JUNE 10, 1902. 



