240 THE PRESENT IMPORTANCE OF SCIENCE 



relationship that is called classification. The case is not 

 otherwise when the law involves the relationship of sequence, 

 as determined by experiment. Thus, experiments may 

 determine that certain phenomena are to be recorded by 

 the series 2-4-6-8-10 and so forth. 4 Here again, one ob- 

 serves a certain grouping of the phenomena. The serial 

 feature introduces a more definite time or space element and 

 a greater complexity of inter-relationship, but it is not clear 

 that it alters the underlying situation. Scientific laws are 

 not a kind of primaeval legislative enactment to which 

 nature must conform, they are merely formulations of 

 observed relationships. If we would cease to speak of them 

 as laws, and call them generalizations, certain unwarranted 

 implications would cease to encumber the philosophy of 

 science. 



Again, the scientist has come to realize that, in the case of 

 complex phenomena, what he regards, as truth at any partic- 

 ular time may not be final. Like every one else, he tends to 

 believe truth as permanently established, when the tests of 

 science have been exhaustively applied to a particular 

 interpretation of a group of phenomena. If the case be one 

 of comparative simplicity, there is strong presumption in 

 favor of the finality of such an interpretation. But all that 

 is meant when we say anything is true, is that, with our 

 present knowledge, a certain timely statement can be made. 

 Such a conditional statement is the truth at any given 

 moment. If, at a subsequent time, new facts necessitate 

 reformulations, we then say the truth is quite different from 

 what we once thought it to be; and this new statement may 

 in its turn be changed or replaced. 



Thus, what is held to be true by one generation may not 



4 The discovery of a multitude of serial relationships in which one term of the 

 series is & function of what follows seems to be the most distinct advance made 

 by modern science over the scientific method of ancient times. In Greek 

 science the classificatory relationship A < was comprehended, but the func- 

 tional relationship was obscure. It is this functional relationship which so 

 reinforces the idea of necessity in causation. 



