But it may be
useful to say, once more, that, at this present moment, nobody knows
anything about the existence of a "force" of gravitation apart from
the fact; that Newton declared the ordinary notion of such force to be
inconceivable; that various attempts have been made to account for the
order of facts we call gravitation, without recourse to the notion of
attractive force; that, if such a force exists, it is utterly
incompetent to account for Kepler's laws, without taking into the
reckoning a great number of other considerations; and, finally, that
all we know about the "force" of gravitation, or any other so-called
"force," is that it is a name for the hypothetical cause of an
observed order of facts.
Thus, when the Duke of Argyll says: "Force, ascertained according to
some measure of its operation--this is indeed one of the definitions,
but only one, of a scientific law" (p. 71) I reply that it is a
definition which must be repudiated by every one who possesses an
adequate acquaintance with either the facts, or the philosophy, of
science, and be relegated to the limbo of pseudo-scientific fallacies.
If the human mind has never entertained this notion of "force," nay,
if it substituted bare invariable succession for the ordinary notion of
causation, the idea of law, as the expression of a constantly-observed
order, which generates a corresponding intensity of expectation in our
minds, would have exactly the same value, and play its part in real
science, exactly as it does now.
Pages:
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144