46 



DE. LUDWIG VOX GERDTELL^ OX 



descriptions of our scientific experience. Our knowledge of the 

 Laws of Xature is here just as little " unalterable " as our 

 experience itself. So far from being unalterable, it is, on the 

 contrary, as an entirety, very variable, being subject to constant 

 chancre and dislocation. It needs therefore constant revision 

 on the basis of sustained and scientific observation. 



One of the most eminent men of recent times, Eduard von 

 Hartmann,has in his work The Ovilook of Modern Physics (1902) 

 once more and with emphasis called attention to the hypothetical 

 element in the Natural Sciences. What he says of Physics 

 applies to all branches of Natural Science. He says : — 



" The sooner physics remembers its merely hypothetical character, 

 the better will it be for its scientific recognition in public opinion. 

 As the Natural Sciences in their fundamental conceptions and 

 logical tendencies have become, generally speaking, an echo 

 of a philosophic bias formerly dominant, so it is again in the 

 second half of the nineteenth century, when they have taken over 

 the claim to unqualified certainty from a dethroned speculative 

 philosophy. Long has the spirit of the times submitted its faith to 

 this claim, but scepticism, which, leagued for so long with the 

 Natural Sciences, opposed philosophy, now begins to waver in its 

 allegiance. The recoil is strongest where the claims were 

 highest, and public adulation of them greatest. The Natural 

 Sciences, the hypotheses of which have been accepted by the public 

 of the last half century as the infallible dogmas of a new revelation, 

 may have to endure temporarily an equally unjustified depreciation 

 with that of philosophy in the last generation, unless in good time 

 it remembers the hypothetical character of its findings. . . . 

 Physics can never attain to a certainty denied to every practical 

 science and which is only to be found in a purely formal science. 

 It must content itself with the greater or lesser probability of truth 

 in its results ... Its conceptions and laws as well as its 

 causes and the existence and constitution of that nature with which 

 it deals are alike hypothetical." 



In truth the expression " absolutely unalterable " is only 

 applicable in Natural Law to that which proceeds from human 

 intelli.^ence — such as logic and mathematics — the purely 

 formal. 



On the other hand, the history of all Natural Sciences shows 

 that the argument of Natural Law has only a relative validity. 

 It requires"^ rearrangement from time to time. This is again 

 dependent upon the actual occurrences met with in experience. 

 If in the study of Natural Science wholly different decisions are 

 arrived at, it will be necessary to formulate afresh the Law of 



