influenced. If, for example, the sun’s attraction, and the original projectile force, had existed in some other ratio to one another than they did (and we know of no reason why this should not have been the case), the derivative laws of the heavenly motions might have been quite different from what they are. The proportions which exist happen to be such as to produce regular elliptical motions; any other proportions would have produced different ellipses, or circular, or parabolic, or hyperbolic motions, but still regular ones; because the effects of each of the agents accumulate according to a uniform law; and two regular series of quantities, when their corresponding terms are added, must produce a regular series of some sort, whatever the quantities themselves are.
§ 3. Now this last-mentioned element in the resolution of a derivative law, the element which is not a law of causation, but a collocation of causes, can not itself be reduced to any law. There is, as formerly remarked,(173) no uniformity, no _norma_, principle, or rule, perceivable in the distribution of the primeval natural agents through the universe.
The different substances composing the earth, the powers that pervade the universe, stand in no constant relation to one another. One substance is more abundant than others, one power acts through a larger extent of space than others, without any pervading analogy that we can discover. We not only do not know of any reason why the sun’s attraction and the force in the direction of the tangent co-exist in the exact proportion they do, but we can trace no coincidence between it and the proportions in which any other elementary powers in the universe are intermingled. The utmost disorder is apparent in the combination of the causes, which is consistent with the most regular order in their effects; for when each agent carries on its own operations according to a uniform law, even the most capricious combination of agencies will generate a regularity of some sort; as we see in the kaleidoscope, where any casual arrangement of colored bits of glass produces by the laws of reflection a beautiful regularity in the effect.
§ 4. In the above considerations lies the justification of the limited degree of reliance which scientific inquirers are accustomed to place in empirical laws.
A derivative law which results wholly from the operation of some one cause, will be as universally true as the laws of the cause itself; that is, it will always be true except where some one of those effects of the cause, on which the derivative law depends, is defeated by a counteracting cause. But when the derivative law results not from different effects of one cause, but from effects of several causes, we can not be certain that it will be true under any variation in the mode of co-existence of those causes, or of the primitive natural agents on which the causes ultimately depend. The proposition that coal-beds rest on certain descriptions of strata exclusively, though true on the earth, so far as our observation has reached, can not be extended to the moon or the other planets, supposing coal to exist there; because we can not be assured that the original constitution of any other planet was such as to produce the different depositions in the same order as in our globe. The derivative law in this case depends not solely on laws, but on a collocation; and collocations can not be reduced to any law.
Now it is the very nature of a derivative law which has not yet been resolved into its elements, in other words, an empirical law, that we do not know whether it results from the different effects of one cause, or from effects of different causes. We can not tell whether it depends wholly on laws, or partly on laws and partly on a collocation. If it depends on a collocation, it will be true in all the cases in which that particular collocation exists. But, since we are entirely ignorant, in case of its depending on a collocation, what the collocation is, we are not safe in extending the law beyond the limits of time and place in which we have actual experience of its truth. Since within those limits the law has always been found true, we have evidence that the collocations, whatever they are, on which it depends, do really exist within those limits. But, knowing of no rule or principle to which the collocations themselves conform, we can not conclude that because a collocation is proved to exist within certain limits of place or time, it will exist beyond those limits. Empirical laws, therefore, can only be received as true within the limits of time and place in which they have been found true by observation; and not merely the limits of time and place, but of time, place, and circumstance; for, since it is the very meaning of an empirical law that we do not know the ultimate laws of causation on which it is dependent, we can not foresee, without actual trial, in what manner or to what extent the introduction of any new circumstance may affect it.
§ 5. But how are we to know that a uniformity ascertained by experience is only an empirical law? Since, by the supposition, we have not been able to resolve it into any other laws, how do we know that it is not an ultimate law of causation?
I answer that no generalization amounts to more than an empirical law when the only proof on which it rests is that of the Method of Agreement. For it has been seen that by that method alone we never can arrive at causes.
The utmost that the Method of Agreement can do is, to ascertain the whole of the circumstances common to all cases in which a phenomenon is produced; and this aggregate includes not only the cause of the phenomenon, but all phenomena with which it is connected by any derivative uniformity, whether as being collateral effects of the same cause, or effects of any other cause which, in all the instances we have been able to observe, co-existed with it. The method affords no means of determining which of these uniformities are laws of causation, and which are merely derivative laws, resulting from those laws of causation and from the collocation of the causes. None of them, therefore, can be received in any other character than that of derivative laws, the derivation of which has not been traced; in other words, empirical laws: in which light all results obtained by the Method of Agreement (and therefore almost all truths obtained by simple observation without experiment) must be considered, until either confirmed by the Method of Difference, or explained deductively; in other words, accounted for _a priori_.
These empirical laws may be of greater or less authority, according as there is reason to presume that they are resolvable into laws only, or into laws and collocations together. The sequences which we observe in the production and subsequent life of an animal or a vegetable, resting on the Method of Agreement only, are mere empirical laws; but though the antecedents in those sequences may not be the causes of the consequents, both the one and the other are doubtless, in the main, successive stages of a progressive effect originating in a common cause, and therefore independent of collocations. The uniformities, on the other hand, in the order of superposition of strata on the earth, are empirical laws of a much weaker kind, since they not only are not laws of causation, but there is no reason to believe that they depend on any common cause; all appearances are in favor of their depending on the particular collocation of natural agents which at some time or other existed on our globe, and from which no inference can be drawn as to the collocation which exists or has existed in any other portion of the universe.
§ 6. Our definition of an empirical law, including not only those uniformities which are not known to be laws of causation, but also those which are, provided there be reason to presume that they are not ultimate laws; this is the proper place to consider by what signs we may judge that even if an observed uniformity be a law of causation, it is not an ultimate, but a derivative law.
The first sign is, if between the antecedent _a_ and the consequent _b_ there be evidence of some intermediate link; some phenomenon of which we can surmise the existence, though from the imperfection of our senses or of our instruments we are unable to ascertain its precise nature and laws.
If there be such a phenomenon (which may be denoted by the letter _x_), it follows that even if _a_ be the cause of _b_, it is but the remote cause, and that the law, _a_ causes _b_, is resolvable into at least two laws, _a_ causes _x_, and _x_ causes _b_. This is a very frequent case, since the operations of nature mostly take place on so minute a scale, that many of the successive steps are either imperceptible, or very indistinctly perceived.
Take, for example, the laws of the chemical composition of substances; as that hydrogen and oxygen being combined, water is produced. All we see of the process is, that the two gases being mixed in certain proportions, and heat or electricity being applied, an explosion takes place, the gases disappear, and water remains. There is no doubt about the law, or about its being a law of causation. But between the antecedent (the gases in a state of mechanical mixture, heated or electrified), and the consequent (the production of water), there must be an intermediate process which we do not see. For if we take any portion whatever of the water, and subject it to analysis, we find that it always contains hydrogen and oxygen; nay, the very same proportions of them, namely, two-thirds, in volume, of hydrogen, and one-third oxygen. This is true of a single drop; it is true of the minutest portion which our instruments are capable of appreciating.
Since, then, the smallest perceptible portion of the water contains both those substances, portions of hydrogen and oxygen smaller than the smallest perceptible must have come together in every such minute portion of space; must have come closer together than when the gases were in a state of mechanical mixture, since (to mention no other reasons) the water occupies far less space than the gases. Now, as we can not see this contact or close approach of the minute particles, we can not observe with what circumstances it is attended, or according to what laws it produces its effects. The production of water, that is, of the sensible phenomena which characterize the compound, may be a very remote effect of those laws. There may be innumerable intervening links; and we are sure that there must be some. Having full proof that corpuscular action of some kind takes place previous to any of the great transformations in the sensible properties of substances, we can have no doubt that the laws of chemical action, as at present known, are not ultimate, but derivative laws; however ignorant we may be, and even though we should forever remain ignorant, of the nature of the laws of corpuscular action from which they are derived.
In like manner, all the processes of vegetative life, whether in the vegetable properly so called or in the animal body, are corpuscular processes. Nutrition is the addition of particles to one another, sometimes merely replacing other particles separated and excreted, sometimes occasioning an increase of bulk or weight so gradual that only after a long continuance does it become perceptible. Various organs, by means of peculiar vessels, secrete from the blood fluids, the component particles of which must have been in the blood, but which differ from it most widely both in mechanical properties and in chemical composition.
Here, then, are abundance of unknown links to be filled up; and there can be no doubt that the laws of the phenomena of vegetative or organic life are derivative laws, dependent on properties of the corpuscles, and of those elementary tissues which are comparatively simple combinations of corpuscles.
The first sign, then, from which a law of causation, though hitherto unresolved, may be inferred to be a derivative law, is any indication of the existence of an intermediate link or links between the antecedent and the consequent. The second is, when the antecedent is an extremely complex phenomenon, and its effects, therefore, probably in part at least, compounded of the effects of its different elements; since we know that the case in which the effect of the whole is not made up of the effects of its parts is exceptional, the Composition of Causes being by far the more ordinary case.
We will illustrate this by two examples, in one of which the antecedent is the sum of many homogeneous, in the other of heterogeneous, parts. The weight of a body is made up of the weights of its minute particles; a truth which astronomers express in its most general terms when they say that bodies, at equal distances, gravitate to one another in proportion to their quantity of matter. All true propositions, therefore, which can be made concerning gravity, are derivative laws; the ultimate law into which they are all resolvable being, that every particle of matter attracts every other. As our second example, we may take any of the sequences observed in meteorology; for instance, a diminution of the pressure of the atmosphere (indicated by a fall of the barometer) is followed by rain. The antecedent is here a complex phenomenon, made up of heterogeneous elements; the column of the atmosphere over any particular place consisting of two parts, a column of air, and a column of aqueous vapor mixed with it; and the change in the two together manifested by a fall of the barometer, and followed by rain, must be either a change in one of these, or in the other, or in both. We might, then, even in the absence of any other evidence, form a reasonable presumption, from the invariable presence of both these elements in the antecedent, that the sequence is probably not an ultimate law, but a result of the laws of the two different agents; a presumption only to be destroyed when we had made ourselves so well acquainted with the laws of both, as to be able to affirm that those laws could not by themselves produce the observed result.
There are but few known cases of succession from very complex antecedents which have not either been actually accounted for from simpler laws, or inferred with great probability (from the ascertained existence of intermediate links of causation not yet understood) to be capable of being so accounted for. It is, therefore, highly probable that all sequences from complex antecedents are thus resolvable, and that ultimate laws are in all cases comparatively simple. If there were not the other reasons already mentioned for believing that the laws of organized nature are resolvable into simpler laws, it would be almost a sufficient reason that the antecedents in most of the sequences are so very complex.
§ 7. In the preceding discussion we have recognized two kinds of empirical laws: those known to be laws of causation, but presumed to be resolvable into simpler laws; and those not known to be laws of causation at all.
Both these kinds of laws agree in the demand which they make for being explained by deduction, and agree in being the appropriate means of verifying such deduction, since they represent the experience with which the result of the deduction must be compared. They agree, further, in this, that until explained, and connected with the ultimate laws from which they result, they have not attained the highest degree of certainty of which laws are susceptible. It has been shown on a former occasion that laws of causation which are derivative, and compounded of simpler laws, are not only, as the nature of the case implies, less general, but even less certain, than the simpler laws from which they result; not in the same degree to be relied on as universally true. The inferiority of evidence, however, which attaches to this class of laws, is trifling, compared with that which is inherent in uniformities not known to be laws of causation at all. So long as these are unresolved, we can not tell on how many collocations, as well as laws, their truth may be dependent; we can never, therefore, extend them with any confidence to cases in which we have not assured ourselves, by trial, that the necessary collocation of causes, whatever it may be, exists. It is to this class of laws alone that the property, which philosophers usually consider as characteristic of empirical laws, belongs in all its strictness—the property of being unfit to be relied on beyond the limits of time, place, and circumstance in which the observations have been made. These are empirical laws in a more emphatic sense; and when I employ that term (except where the context manifestly indicates the reverse) I shall generally mean to designate those uniformities only, whether of succession or of co-existence, which are not known to be laws of causation.
Chapter XVII.
Of Chance And Its Elimination.
§ 1. Considering, then, as empirical laws only those observed uniformities respecting which the question whether they are laws of causation must remain undecided until they can be explained deductively, or until some means are found of applying the Method of Difference to the case, it has been shown in the preceding chapter that until a uniformity can, in one or the other of these modes, be taken out of the class of empirical laws, and brought either into that of laws of causation or of the demonstrated results of laws of causation, it can not with any assurance be pronounced true beyond the local and other limits within which it has been found so by actual observation. It remains to consider how we are to assure ourselves of its truth even within those limits; after what quantity of experience a generalization which rests solely on the Method of Agreement can be considered sufficiently established, even as an empirical law. In a former chapter, when treating of the Methods of Direct Induction, we expressly reserved this question,(174) and the time is now come for endeavoring to solve it.
We found that the Method of Agreement has the defect of not proving causation, and can, therefore, only be employed for the ascertainment of empirical laws. But we also found that besides this deficiency, it labors under a characteristic imperfection, tending to render uncertain even such conclusions as it is in itself adapted to prove. This imperfection arises from Plurality of Causes. Although two or more cases in which the phenomenon _a_ has been met with may have no common antecedent except A, this does not prove that there is any connection between _a_ and A, since _a_ may have many causes, and may have been produced, in these different instances, not by any thing which the instances had in common, but by some of those elements in them which were different. We nevertheless observed, that in proportion to the multiplication of instances pointing to A as the antecedent, the characteristic uncertainty of the method diminishes, and the existence of a law of connection between A and _a_ more nearly approaches to certainty. It is now to be determined after what amount of experience this certainty may be deemed to be practically attained, and the connection between A and _a_ may be received as an empirical law.
This question may be otherwise stated in more familiar terms: After how many and what sort of instances may it be concluded that an observed coincidence between two phenomena is not the effect of chance?
It is of the utmost importance for understanding the logic of induction, that we should form a distinct conception of what is meant by chance, and how the phenomena which common language ascribes to that abstraction are really produced.
§ 2. Chance is usually spoken of in direct antithesis to law; whatever, it is supposed, can not be ascribed to any law is attributed to chance. It is, however, certain that whatever happens is the result of some law; is an effect of causes, and could have been predicted from a knowledge of the existence of those causes, and from their laws. If I turn up a particular card, that is a consequence of its place in the pack. Its place in the pack was a consequence of the manner in which the cards were shuffled, or of the order in which they were played in the last game; which, again, were effects of prior causes. At every stage, if we had possessed an accurate knowledge of the causes in existence, it would have been abstractedly possible to foretell the effect.
An event occurring by chance may be better described as a coincidence from which we have no ground to infer a uniformity—the occurrence of a phenomenon in certain circumstances, without our having reason on that account to infer that it will happen again in those circumstances. This, however, when looked closely into, implies that the enumeration of the circumstances is not complete. Whatever the fact be, since it has occurred once, we may be sure that if _all_ the same circumstances were repeated it would occur again; and not only if all, but there is some particular portion of those circumstances on which the phenomenon is invariably consequent. With most of them, however, it is not connected in any permanent manner; its conjunction with those is said to be the effect of chance, to be merely casual. Facts casually conjoined are separately the effects of causes, and therefore of laws; but of different causes, and causes not connected by any law.
It is incorrect, then, to say that any phenomenon is produced by chance; but we may say that two or more phenomena are conjoined by chance, that they co-exist or succeed one another only by chance; meaning that they are in no way related through causation; that they are neither cause and effect, nor effects of the same cause, nor effects of causes between which there subsists any law of co-existence, nor even effects of the same collocation of primeval causes.
If the same casual coincidence never occurred a second time, we should have an easy test for distinguishing such from the coincidences which are the results of a law. As long as the phenomena had been found together only once, so long, unless we knew some more general laws from which the coincidence might have resulted, we could not distinguish it from a casual one; but if it occurred twice, we should know that the phenomena so conjoined must be in some way connected through their causes.
There is, however, no such test. A coincidence may occur again and again, and yet be only casual. Nay, it would be inconsistent with what we know of the order of nature to doubt that every casual coincidence will sooner or later be repeated, as long as the phenomena between which it occurred do not cease to exist, or to be reproduced. The recurrence, therefore, of the same coincidence more than once, or even its frequent recurrence, does not prove that it is an instance of any law; does not prove that it is not casual, or, in common language, the effect of chance.
And yet, when a coincidence can not be deduced from known laws, nor proved by experiment to be itself a case of causation, the frequency of its occurrence is the only evidence from which we can infer that it is the result of a law. Not, however, its absolute frequency. The question is not whether the coincidence occurs often or seldom, in the ordinary sense of those terms; but whether it occurs more often than chance will account for; more often than might rationally be expected if the coincidence were casual. We have to decide, therefore, what degree of frequency in a coincidence chance will account for; and to this there can be no general answer. We can only state the principle by which the answer must be determined; the answer itself will be different in every different case.
Suppose that one of the phenomena, A, exists always, and the other phenomenon, B, only occasionally; it follows that every instance of B will be an instance of its coincidence with A, and yet the coincidence will be merely casual, not the result of any connection between them. The fixed stars have been constantly in existence since the beginning of human experience, and all phenomena that have come under human observation have, in every single instance, co-existed with them; yet this coincidence, though equally invariable with that which exists between any of those phenomena and its own cause, does not prove that the stars are its cause, nor that they are in anywise connected with it. As strong a case of coincidence, therefore, as can possibly exist, and a much stronger one in point of mere frequency than most of those which prove laws, does not here prove a law; why? because, since the stars exist always, they _must_ co-exist with every other phenomenon, whether connected with them by causation or not. The uniformity, great though it be, is no greater than would occur on the supposition that no such connection exists.
On the other hand, suppose that we were inquiring whether there be any connection between rain and any particular wind. Rain, we know, occasionally occurs with every wind; therefore, the connection, if it exists, can not be an actual law; but still rain may be connected with some particular wind through causation; that is, though they can not be always effects of the same cause (for if so they would regularly co-exist), there may be some causes common to the two, so that in so far as either is produced by those common causes, they will, from the laws of the causes, be found to co-exist. How, then, shall we ascertain this? The obvious answer is, by observing whether rain occurs with one wind more frequently than with any other. That, however, is not enough; for perhaps that one wind blows more frequently than any other; so that its blowing more frequently in rainy weather is no more than would happen, although it had no connection with the causes of rain, provided it were not connected with causes adverse to rain. In England, westerly winds blow during about twice as great a portion of the year as easterly. If, therefore, it rains only twice as often with a westerly as with an easterly wind, we have no reason to infer that any law of nature is concerned in the coincidence. If it rains more than twice as often, we may be sure that some law is concerned; either there is some cause in nature which, in this climate, tends to produce both rain and a westerly wind, or a westerly wind has itself some tendency to produce rain. But if it rains less than twice as often, we may draw a directly opposite inference: the one, instead of being a cause, or connected with causes of the other, must be connected with causes adverse to it, or with the absence of some cause which produces it; and though it may still rain much oftener with a westerly wind than with an easterly, so far would this be from proving any connection between the phenomena, that the connection proved would be between rain and an easterly wind, to which, in mere frequency of coincidence, it is less allied.
Here, then, are two examples: in one, the greatest possible frequency of coincidence, with no instance whatever to the contrary, does not prove that there is any law; in the other, a much less frequency of coincidence, even when non-coincidence is still more frequent, does prove that there is a law. In both cases the principle is the same. In both we consider the positive frequency of the phenomena themselves, and how great frequency of coincidence that must of itself bring about, without supposing any connection between them, provided there be no repugnance; provided neither be connected with any cause tending to frustrate the other. If we find a greater frequency of coincidence than this, we conclude that there is some connection; if a less frequency, that there is some repugnance. In the former case, we conclude that one of the phenomena can under some circumstances cause the other, or that there exists something capable of causing them both; in the latter, that one of them, or some cause which produces one of them, is capable of counteracting the production of the other. We have thus to deduct from the observed frequency of coincidence as much as may be the effect of chance, that is, of the mere frequency of the phenomena themselves; and if any thing remains, what does remain is the residual fact which proves the existence of a law.
The frequency of the phenomena can only be ascertained within definite limits of space and time; depending as it does on the quantity and distribution of the primeval natural agents, of which we can know nothing beyond the boundaries of human observation, since no law, no regularity, can be traced in it, enabling us to infer the unknown from the known. But for the present purpose this is no disadvantage, the question being confined within the same limits as the data. The coincidences occurred in certain places and times, and within those we can estimate the frequency with which such coincidences would be one case out of every two, and B in one case out of every three; then, if there be neither connection nor repugnance between them, or between any of their causes, the instances in which A and B will both exist, that is to say will co-exist, will be one case in every six. For A exists in three cases out of six; and B, existing in one case out of every three without regard to the presence or absence of A, will exist in one case out of those three. There will therefore be, of the whole number of cases, two in which A exists without B; one case of B without A; two in which neither B nor A exists, and one case out of six in which they both exist. If, then, in point of fact, they are found to co-exist oftener than in one case out of six; and, consequently, A does not exist without B so often as twice in three times, nor B without A so often as once in every twice, there is some cause in existence which tends to produce a conjunction between A and B.
Generalizing the result, we may say that if A occurs in a larger proportion of the cases where B is than of the cases where B is not, then will B also occur in a larger proportion of the cases where A is than of the cases where A is not; and there is some connection, through causation, between A and B. If we could ascend to the causes of the two phenomena, we should find, at some stage, either proximate or remote, some cause or causes common to both; and if we could ascertain what these are, we could frame a generalization which would be true without restriction of place or time; but until we can do so, the fact of a connection between the two phenomena remains an empirical law.
§ 3. Having considered in what manner it may be determined whether any given conjunction of phenomena is casual, or the result of some law, to complete the theory of chance it is necessary that we should now consider those effects which are partly the result of chance and partly of law, or, in other words, in which the effects of casual conjunctions of causes are habitually blended in one result with the effects of a constant cause.
This is a case of Composition of Causes; and the peculiarity of it is, that instead of two or more causes intermixing their effects in a regular manner with those of one another, we have now one constant cause, producing an effect which is successively modified by a series of variable causes. Thus, as summer advances, the approach of the sun to a vertical position tends to produce a constant increase of temperature; but with this effect of a constant cause, there are blended the effects of many variable causes, winds, clouds, evaporation, electric agencies and the like, so that the temperature of any given day depends in part on these fleeting causes, and only in part on the constant cause. If the effect of the constant cause is always accompanied and disguised by effects of variable causes, it is impossible to ascertain the law of the constant cause in the ordinary manner by separating it from all other causes and observing it apart. Hence arises the necessity of an additional rule of experimental inquiry.
When the action of a cause A is liable to be interfered with, not steadily by the same cause or causes, but by different causes at different times, and when these are so frequent, or so indeterminate, that we can not possibly exclude all of them from any experiment, though we may vary them; our resource is, to endeavor to ascertain what is the effect of all the variable causes taken together. In order to do this, we make as many trials as possible, preserving A invariable. The results of these different trials will naturally be different, since the indeterminate modifying causes are different in each; if, then, we do not find these results to be progressive, but, on the contrary, to oscillate about a certain point, one experiment giving a result a little greater, another a little less, one a result tending a little more in one direction, another a little more in the contrary direction; while the average or middle point does not vary, but different sets of experiments (taken in as great a variety of circumstances as possible) yield the same mean, provided only they be sufficiently numerous; then that mean, or average result, is the part, in each experiment, which is due to the cause A, and is the effect which would have been obtained if A could have acted alone; the variable remainder is the effect of chance, that is, of causes the co-existence of which with the cause A was merely casual. The test of the sufficiency of the induction in this case is, when any increase of the number of trials from which the average is struck does not materially alter the average.
This kind of elimination, in which we do not eliminate any one assignable cause, but the multitude of floating unassignable ones, may be termed the Elimination of Chance. We afford an example of it when we repeat an experiment, in order, by taking the mean of different results, to get rid of the effects of the unavoidable errors of each individual experiment. When there is no permanent cause, such as would produce a tendency to error peculiarly in one direction, we are warranted by experience in assuming that the errors on one side will, in a certain number of experiments, about balance the errors on the contrary side. We therefore repeat the experiment, until any change which is produced in the average of the whole by further repetition, falls within limits of error consistent with the degree of accuracy required by the purpose we have in view.(175) § 4. In the supposition hitherto made, the effect of the constant cause A has been assumed to form so great and conspicuous a part of the general result, that its existence never could be a matter of