the science does with the given motions? No, one thing more the science assumes, namely, that if the system of motions in question is not subject to any external influence, it will remain fundamentally and in deepest truth the same in future, that is: The simplest description of the given motions in a system of bodies that is wholly independent of the action of bodies without the system, this description is permanent for all states of the system. This assumption is needed before mechanical science can venture on any prediction, or beyond mere descrip- tion of past and present motions. This is the pos- tulate of the uniformity of nature in its mechanical shape. The complete present description of the world would reveal the whole future of the world.[1]
What, however, does this postulate of uniformity express for our thought? What is the philosophical outcome of it? It expresses for our thought the demand that nature shall answer our highest intellectual needs, namely, the need for simplicity and absolute unity of conception. Mechanical science can no more do without this assumption than can any other science.
The ground that we have here very briefly passed over is known to all readers of modern controversy. We can only add our conviction that, as far as it goes, the foregoing view is a perfectly fair one. Whether or no there be any deeper basis for this
- ↑ Professor Clifford, in his essay on Theories of the Physical Forces, in his Lectures and Essays, vol. i., p. 109 sqq., has undertaken to reduce this postulate to the general one of Continuity. The philosophical outcome would be the same.
