THEORY OF OBSERVATIONS (CLASSIC REPRINT)

Excerpt from Theory of ObservationsThis assumption, which may be called the law of causality, cannot be proved, but must be believed, in the same way as we believe the fundamental assumptions of religion, with which it is closely and intimately connected. The law of causality forces itself upon our belief. It may be denied in theory, but not in practice. Any person who denies it, will, if he is watchful enough, catch himself constantly asking himself, if no one else, why this has happened, and not that. But in that very question he bears witness to the law of causality. If we are consistently to deny the law of causality, we must repudiate all observation, and particularly all prediction based on past experience, as useless and misleading.If we could imagine for an instant that the same complete combination of causes could have a definite number of different consequences, however small that number might be, and that among these the occurrence of the actual consequence was, in the old sense of the word, accidental, no observation would ever be of any particular value. Scientific observations cannot be reconciled with polytheism. So long as the idea prevailed that the result of a journey depended on whether the power of Njord or that of Skade was the stronger, or that victory or defeat in battle depended on whether Jove had, or had not, listened to Junos complaints, so long were even scientists obliged to consider it below their dignity to consult observations.But if the law of causality is acknowledged to be an assumption which always holds good, then every observation gives us a revelation which, when correctly appraised and compared with others, teaches us the laws by which God rules the world.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art