114

Logic 114

which does not involve some direct action of the future on the past?
All our knowledge of the laws of nature is analogous to knowledge of the future in as much as there is no direct way in which the laws can become known to us.
We here proceed by experimentation.
That is to say we guess out the laws bit by bit.
We ask if we were to vary our proceedure a little?
Would the result be the same?
We try it.
If we are on the wrong trak an emphatic negative soon gets put upon the guess and so our conceptions gradually get nearer and nearer right.
The improvements of our inventions are made in the same manner.
The theory of natural selection is that nature proceeds by similar experimentation to adapt a stock of animals or plants precisely to its environment and to keep it in adaptation to the slowly changing environment.
But every such slowly changing environment.
But every such procedure whether it be that of the human mind or that of the organic species supposes that effects will follow