See Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic, ed.
Morris R. Cohen, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1923, pp.l60-63:
summary
The researches of Galileo, followed
up by Huygens and others, led to those modern conceptions of Force and
Law, which have revolutionized the intellectual world. The
great attention given to mechanics in the seventeenth century soon so emphasized
these conceptions as to give rise to the Mechanical Philosophy, or doctrine
that all the phenomena of the physical universe are to be explained upon
mechanical principles. Newton's great discovery imparted a new impetus
to this tendency. The old notion that heat consists in an agitation
of corpuscles was now applied to the explanation of the chief properties
of gases. The first suggestion in this direction was that the pressure
of gases is explained by the battering of the particles against the walls
of the containing vessel, which explained Boyle's law of the compressibility
of air. Later, the expansion of gases, Avogadro's chemical law, the
diffusion and viscosity of gases, and the action of Crooke's radiometer
were shown to be consequences of the same kinetical theory; but other phenomena,
such as the ratio of the specific heat at constant volume to that at constant
pressure, require additional hypotheses, which we have little reason to
suppose are simple, so that we find ourselves quite afloat. In like
manner with regard to light. That it consists of vibrations was almost
proved by the phenomena of diffraction, while those of polarization showed
the excursions of the particles to be perpendicular to the line of propagation;
but the phenomena of dispersion, etc., require additional hypotheses which
may be very complicated. Thus, the further progress of molecular
speculation appears quite uncertain. If hypotheses are to be tried
haphazard, or simply because they will suit certain phenomena, it will
occupy the mathematical physicists of the world say half a century on the
average to bring each theory to the test, and since the number of possible
theories may go up into the trillions, only one of which can be true, we
have little prospect of making further solid additions to the subject in
our time. When we come to atoms, the presumption in favor of a simple
law seems very slender. There is room for serious doubt whether the
fundamental laws of mechanics hold good for single atoms, and it seems
quite likely that they are capable of motion in more than three dimensions.
go back to summary
To find out much more about
molecules and atoms, we must search out a natural history of laws of nature,
which may fulfil that function which the presumption in favor of simple
laws fulfilled in the early days of dynamics, by showing us what kind of
laws we have to expect and by answering such questions as this: Can
we with reasonable prospect of not wasting time, try the supposition that
atoms attract one another inversely as the seventh power of their distances,
or can we not ? To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being
apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms,
but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position.
Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted
for. That a pitched coin should sometimes turn up heads and
sometimes tails calls for no particular explanation; but if it shows heads
every time, we wish to know how this result has been brought about.
Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.
go back to summary
Now the only
possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in
general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them
not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely. It makes an element
of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature.
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