42 INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 



not make our experience of the world around us 

 and of ourselves more intelligible, and does not 

 this increased intelligibility depend in great part 

 on the discovery of causes? Science has been 

 defined, indeed, by a distinguished physiologist, 

 Prof. Gotch, as "the causative arrangement of 

 phenomena." 



But how is this consistent with the descriptive 

 view of Science? We have seen that Science does 

 not "explain" anything. But what else is the 

 discovery of causes? 



To answer this question involves a brief 

 digression into a difficult and dangerous terri- 

 tory, the meaning of cause. The first point that 

 we must be clear about is that in the natural 

 sciences, the causes which are discovered are 

 "secondary" or "caused causes," the question 

 of ultimate causes not being raised; and that 

 they are "efficient," not "final" causes, not 

 giving any answer to the question "Why?" In 

 the natural sciences the word cause is used in 

 the sense indicated by Mill, "a cause which is 

 itself a phenomenon without reference to the 

 ultimate cause of anything." Causation, Mill 

 said, is simply uniform antecedence. 



But even after we have become clear that 

 Science has not to do with a First Cause, or 

 with Final Causes, great ambiguities remain. 

 As Prof. Bergson points out, even in scientific 



