Scientific law

“ The uniformity of law in the occurrence of events according to the causal principle in the realm of material nature, can be approached by us in no other form than in that of mechanism, provided we understand by mechanism an activity according to law and which can be mathematically estimated as to size and number. So far, therefore, every scientific investigator in the knowledge of material nature takes his place on the standpoint of a mechanical view of the world. ”

“ I think, if your honor please, that this act—that a correct construction of this act, as a matter of law, prohibits the introduction of this scientific testimony. If you place scientists on the witness stand, men who claim to know and who say they are versed and who no doubt are, no doubt you have many splendid and eminent gentlemen here, who say they are versed in matters of science and particularly in that branch of science which devoted itself to this theory of evolution. ”

“ The simplest demands of a truly scientific mind are slighted so inexcusably. Could any law of an alien, external nature ever be an actual or possible object of knowledge? And could such law as is known —of a nature not alien—ever have any but a relative value, a provisional mediate character? Nature may be a machine, but the law of her moving is never identical with any law in positive knowledge, though what is known is always informed with the law of her moving ”

“ And yet laws of this kind, which apply to a large majority of men, unquestionably exist, and when clearly defined are of great value as a guide in dealing with men. In developing these laws, accurate, carefully planned and executed experiments, extending through a term of years, have been made, similar in a general way to the experiments upon various other elements which have been referred to in this paper. Perhaps the most important law belonging to this class, in its relation to scientific management, is the effect which the task idea has upon the efficiency of the workman. ”

“ It also indeed reveals the law and order that there prevail; but what the concrete world really is and what is the source of the law and order that it manifests are questions still wholly on our hands. But to call such descriptive scheme pure or rational science is to emphasize its source in mind; and when this intelligible scheme of our devising, with which the scientific inquirer greets Nature, is confirmed by Nature’s response, are we not justified in concluding that Nature is intelligent or that there is intelligence behind it? ”

“ Long ago, physical science abandoned this method and took up that of detection of correlation of events. Our language and our thinking is still saturated with the idea of laws which phenomena “obey.” But in his actual procedures, the scientific inquirer into physical events treats a law simply as a stable correlation of changes in what happens, a statement of the way in which one phenomenon, or some aspect or phase of it, varies when some other specified phenomenon varies. ”

“ Solve it, and the whole sceptical argument crumbles. The naturalistic theory, we both say, is incredible. The scientific doctrines based upon it are, as we both admit, unassailable. How is this? I reply, first, because the atoms represent nothing more than a logical scaffolding which enables us to infer one set of sensible phenomena from another. We start from phenomena and we end with phenomena. When we have discovered the so-called "law"—the connecting formula—we can remove the hypothesis as the engineer can remove the provisional supports when he has once got the keystone into his arch. ”

“ It uses correspondences to explain the past; it never struck science to use them to try to forecast the future; and naturally, for along the scientific line such forecast of the future is practically impossible; science works by induction, not by deduction, gathers together innumerable facts, arranges them, classifies them, compares them, and out of all that gathering, arrangement, and comparison it tries to find by a process of logical induction some great principle in which all the classified facts find their explanation, and thus a law is discovered. ”

“ They mean that in order to know anything that deserves confidence, in order to obtain a real result, it is necessary in the first place to establish the reality of facts and to discriminate between the true, the not so sure, the merely possible, and the false. Having accurate and verified data, scientific method then proceeds to classify them, and this is the organizing of knowledge. The final process involves a summary of the facts and their relations by some simple expression or formula. A good illustration of a scientific principle is the natural law of gravitation. ”

“ To make it such is in every respect the reverse of scientific. The work immediately in hand, therefore, is to devise such changes in the fundamental law as will tend most effectually to bring about the solution of issues as they may arise, by the most expert, observant and reliable. ”

“ Still, it is not so much in laws based upon direct observation or experiment, that the material validity of scientific reasoning appears, as in the cumulative evidence that arises from the co-ordination of laws within each science, and the growing harmony and coherence of all sciences. ”

“ The mere collection of data, however multiplied in detail, however abstruse the subjects to which they may refer, does not of itself deserve the name of science. The term properly applies only when phenomena are placed in causal relation, and the laws which govern their development are traced. Measured by this standard, every attempt to explain the growth of human thought and institutions, and to elucidate the laws which have acted in the process of their evolution, has a just claim to be classed under the head of scientific inquiry. ”

“ This law applies to everything we do, from driving a nail to launching a space probe. While the conscience of the scientist insists that he continually recheck the truth of this law, it remains a bulwark of science. ”

“ Although we cannot always isolate our factors, control our processes, and otherwise apply scientific method, with results as conclusive as those obtained in laboratories of chemistry, physics, or biology, we need not therefore reject scientific method in favor of a rule-of-thumb. ”

“ Yet our scientists pretend that they can, from the observation and analysis of facts, induce a law, and a law that will hold good beyond the particulars observed and analyzed. But they do not obtain any law at all; and the laws of nature, about which they talk so learnedly, are not laws, but simply facts. ”

“ Such is the constitution of nature, that the physicist learns to distinguish those properties which have wide and uniform extension, from those which vary between case and case. Not only are certain laws distinctly laid down, with their extension carefully defined, but a scientific training gives a kind of tact in judging how far other laws are likely to apply under any particular circumstances. ”

“ When a phenomenon is produced according to a certain law of nature, we call the law [or rule] the cause of that phenomenon; and to the laws or rules of nature we accordingly ascribe power or efficiency. The whole business of physics is to discover, by observation and experiment, the laws of nature, and to apply them to the solution of phenomena. ”

“ But we are engaged on a scientific enquiry,—and if there be one principle more than another upon which Science insists, it is that we should prove all things, not by authority, but by evidence,—and that we should seek evidence, not in pre-conceived ideas as to what should be, but in observation of what is. Accordingly, while we are most ready to accept Transformism or Darwinism should we find solid reasons for doing so, we are bound, for the sake of Science, to demand unimpeachable proofs before subscribing to doctrines which are made responsible for so much. ”

“ So, in the same way, the man of science replies to objections of this kind, by simply getting up and walking onward, and showing what science has done and is doing---by pointing to that immense mass of facts which have been ascertained as systematised under the forms of the great doctrines of morphology, of development, of distribution, and the like. He sees an enormous mass of facts and laws relating to organic beings, which stand on the same good sound foundation as every other natural law. ”

“ Nor does science, despite its radium speculations and its attempted analyses of the ultimate nature of matter, give us any other word than that man will pass. So far as man's knowledge goes, law is universal. ”

“ In concluding this historical statement I consider it well to observe that no law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition is always preceded by many hints; the establishment of a law, however, does not take place when its significance is recognised, but only when it has been confirmed by experiment, which the man of science must consider as the only proof of the correctness of his conjectures and opinions. ”

“ If we suppose the progress of natural science to lead to the discovery of a single, simple law, which presides over the development of all others, and the application of which, varied according to circumstances, is a sufficient reason of all the phenomena now referred to many and very complicated laws; this would, without doubt, be an immense progress in sciences the object of which is the visible world ”

“ We have noticed a certain manifest difference of nature between law and science, in that every science is delighted and desires to open its inward parts and display the very heart of its principles, and to show forth the roots from which it buds and flourishes, and that the emanation of its springs may be seen of all men; for thus from the cognate and harmonious light of the truth of conclusion to principles, the whole body of science will be full of light, having no part dark. ”

“ The great fact that science in all its branches shows is the universality of law. Wherever he can trace it, whether in the fall of an apple or in the revolution of binary suns, the astronomer sees the working of the same law, operating in the minutest divisions in which we may distinguish space as it operates in the immeasurable distances with which his science deals. ”

“ Having discovered the laws of nature applying to the case, and verified them by showing that they agree with the experiments in question, we are then in a position to anticipate the results of similar experiments. Our knowledge even now is not certain, because we cannot completely prove the truth of any assumed law, and we cannot possibly exhaust all the circumstances which may affect the result. ”

“ It is on this same basis that physical science pursues, with ever-increasing success, its quest of laws of nature. Nor need this restriction hamper the scientific study of human life, in which the real difficulties are the practical ones of enormous complexity of evidence, and imperfection of methods of observation. ”

“ Now, may it please your honor, we will have evidence, and now we think simply by appealing to your judicial knowledge, we can show that not only can the legislature not cherish science, but in no possible way can science he taught or science be studied without bringing in the doctrine of evolution, which this particular act attempts to make a crime. Whether it is true or not true, all the important matters of science are expressed in the evolution nomenclature. ”

“ That without which a science cannot exist is commensurate in use with the science itself; being the fundamental law, it will testify its own importance in the changes which it will impress on all the derivative laws. ”

“ After this preliminary statement of the results of experimental investigation, we said, "Therefore, it is now regarded as a fundamental truth of physical science, and a fundamental law of Nature, that force, like matter, is never created or destroyed." The proposition is stated as an inference, as an induction from observations, as a result of experimental inquiry into the physical processes of Nature, and as a pure principle of science. ”

“ They consist of ideas which, whilst they assist us in understanding science, and in making discoveries, form no real part of our positive knowledge.
Other persons seem to think that the laws of matter are different in the laboratory from what they are in the workshop; that the principles which regulate a scientific experiment are different from those which govern a large manufacturing process; but this is a wrong idea. The laws of matter are universal, substances have nearly the same properties in all places and in the hands of all men ”

“ Certain great laws ought to be discovered, and they can be discovered only by means of researches such as are here suggested. A few years of steady, earnest work upon the part of fifty scientific chemists would accomplish all the chief results which I have ventured to prophesy. ”

“ Let us agree that we have not studied or dealt with jurisprudence as a science, have never envisaged it as an empirical discipline; that the aprioristic and classical tradition had kept this insight at a distance, and that where investigation and effort toward the recognition of the true is lacking, there lacks everything of the least scientific importance. To be scientifically legitimate, we need first of all the installation of the disciplines of research which shall have direct relationships with our proper task. ”