86 MODES OF RESEARCH IN GENETICS 



universe as organized on a statistical plan. This 

 has come to carry with it two implications, one 

 of which is quite fallacious and the other partly 

 so. 



The first of these is that the individual events, 

 of which all the causes are not precisely known to 

 us, are indeterminate. Such an assumption is of 

 course unwarranted. Because we do not know all 

 the causes leading to a particular event does not 

 mean that that event is any the less precisely 

 determined by the course of antecedent events. 

 Consider a box containing 100 consecutively 

 numbered cards. Suppose one card were to be 

 drawn and that it bore the number 36. It would 

 be quite impossible to formulate precisely all the 

 causes which led to the drawing of the number 

 36 on the particular occasion considered, but it 

 is equally impossible to conceive that this result 

 was not definitely "caused." In other words, 

 there clearly was a whole train of antecedent 

 circumstances, which taken all together definitely 

 resulted, and could only have residted, in the draw- 

 ing of the number 36. The too prevalent con- 

 clusion that the application of the statistical 

 method or statistical modes of thought implies 

 phenomenal indeterminism in the individual case 

 is totally fallacious. 



The second currently accepted implication of a 

 statistical view of the universe is that in general 

 a particular event or phenomenon is the outcome 



