22 THE UNFATHOMED UNIVERSE 



turn '' ; for why, the resultant is just another form of the 

 components. In the great majority of cases, however, where 

 there is a qualitative change, we know that a given colloca- 

 tion of matter and energy gives rise to another, and does 

 so uniformly, but w^e cannot tell why the resultant must be 

 as it is and not otherwise. In the great majority of cases all 

 that science can say is, ^' If this, then that " ; and it is a 

 very useful thing to be able to say. 



Every one knows that oxygen and hydrogen will unite vio- 

 lently to form water, but all that we can say is that it is their 

 nature to. Perhaps it may be explained as due to ^' the in- 

 terplay between electricity and matter ", and then we shall 

 shift the pegs of our claim in the desert of ignorance. 



We rub our eyes and say : " But surely it is the very 

 business of Science to show how things happen, to explain 

 occurrences." So in a sense it is, but as Professor Stout 

 puts it, " What is really done is to show that a given result, 

 often called an effect, is part of a continuous process which 

 includes a known antecedent, often called the cause." In- 

 deed, " the current scientific conception of a cause " is the 

 ^' totality of the conditions in the presence of which an event 

 occurs and in the absence of any member of which it does not 

 occur" (Taylor, 1909, p. 170). 



(;) Finally there is a sense in which science, if not 

 asymptotic, is bound for a long time to remain approximate. 

 The Universe is still unfathomed. 



(1) A scientific law formulates an observed routine in 

 the order of nature, but sometimes it is only a provisional 

 ^ fit '. Residual phenomena emerge which lead to restate- 

 ment. So Kepler improves on Copernicus, and Newton on 

 Kepler. 



(2) Even when the ' fit ' of the formulation is more 



