228 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



was there an axiom more stoutly maintained, or more empty of 

 definite signification, than the so-called law of cause and effect. 

 Kant (in the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason) an- 

 nounced as an a priori principle of the understanding: ' 'Every- 

 thing that happens (begins to be) presupposes something upon 

 which it follows according to a rule." Probably few living 

 scholars would accept this formula as absolutely true. It ap- 

 pears, for example, to imply the existence of distinct chains of 

 causation. 



What, then, of the strife between determinism and indeter- 

 minism? If any particular type of determination is specified, 

 the latter has the advantage. To declare, for example, that all 

 change is interpretable as the transformation of energy is to 

 commit oneself to a dogma of at least doubtful probability. 

 But if no type is specified, and determination means anything 

 and everything to which analogy may ever lead us to apply 

 the term, the determinist has the advantage such as it is. In 

 fact, the history of the controversy contains repeated instances 

 of the claiming by the one party as determination (or freedom) 

 of what had been previously advanced in the opposite sense by 

 their opponents. 



The real significance of the law of causality, or the law of 

 reciprocal determination, is as a methodological postulate. It 

 means that in our endeavor to explain the world, we regard no 

 datum as absolutely inexplicable. And as explanation at any 

 stage of scientific development must operate by means of the 

 categories available at that stage, practically this amounts to 

 saying that the categories we already possess are equal to the 

 entire explication of the universe. If this be false, yet it is by 

 acting as if it were true, by carrying our hypotheses through to 

 the bitter end, that their inadequacy becomes evident and their 

 development proceeds. 



In the second place, it is urged that all the realities we know 

 have come into being by the very same process by which our 

 knowledge of them has developed. This, it is affirmed, is the 



