204 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



true, no information is conveyed about the universe in 

 stating that it is deterministic. It is true that the formulae 

 involved may be of strictly infinite complexity, and there 

 fore not practically capable of being written down or 

 apprehended. But except from the point of view of our 

 knowledge, this might seem to be a detail : in itself, if 

 the above considerations are sound, the material universe 

 must be deterministic, must be subject to laws. 



This, however, is plainly not what was intended. The 

 difference between this view and the view intended may 

 be seen as follows. Given some formula which fits the 

 facts hitherto say the law of gravitation there will be 

 an infinite number of other formulae, not empirically dis 

 tinguishable from it in the past, but diverging from it 

 more and more in the future. Hence, even assuming 

 that there are persistent laws, we shall have no reason 

 for assuming that the law of the inverse square will hold 

 in future ; it may be some other hitherto indistinguishable 

 law that will hold. We cannot say that every law which 

 has held hitherto must hold in the future, because past 

 facts which obey one law will also obey others, hitherto 

 indistinguishable but diverging in future. Hence there 

 must, at every moment, be laws hitherto unbroken which 

 are now broken for the first time. What science does, in 

 fact, is to select the simplest formula that will fit the facts. 

 But this, quite obviously, is merely a methodological 

 precept, not a law of Nature. If the simplest formula 

 ceases, after a time, to be applicable, the simplest formula 

 that remains applicable is selected, and science has no 

 sense that an axiom has been falsified. We are thus left 

 with the brute fact that, in many departments of science, 

 quite simple laws have hitherto been found to hold. This 

 fact cannot be regarded as having any a priori ground, 

 nor can it be used to support inductively the opinion that 



