Abstract
What the scientist is seeking beyond law is, of course, often designated by the term cause, which in this sense becomes almost synonymous with the term explanation: when one knows the cause or causes of a phenomenon, the phenomenon will be explained and the mind will declare itself satisfied.
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Notes
Thomas Hobbes, Of Liberty and Necessity, in The Moral and Political Works (London: n. p., 1750), p. 484.
Leibniz, Opera 715 [Principles of Nature and Grace, § 7, Parkinson 199].
Bernhard Riemann, Gesammelte mathematische Werke und Wissenschaftlicher Nachlass, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: B. J. Teubner, 1892), p. 522.
Hans Driesch, Naturbegriffe und Natururteile (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann, 1904), p. 42.
Edmond Goblot, ‘Le Concept et l’idée,’ Scientia 11 (1912) 105
Edmond Goblot, ‘Sur le syllogisme de la première figure,’ Rev. de méta. 17 (1909) 359.
Edmond Goblot, Essai sur la classification des sciences (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1898), pp. 23, 32, 49, 50,
Edmond Goblot, Traité de logique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1918), pp. 107,196.
Georges Cuvier, Leçons d’anatomie comparée, Paris: Baudouin, Years 8–14 [of the First French Republic: 1800–1805], 1:47, 55, 57 [Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, trans. William Ross (London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1802), 1:47–48, 55–57].
Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe et sur les changements qu’elles ont produits dans le règne animal, 6th ed. (Paris: Edmond D’Ocagne, 1830), pp. 102, 105, 107 [Essay on the Theory of the Earth, trans. Robert Kerr, 3rd ed. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1817; reprint New York: Arno Press, 1978), pp. 95, 97–98, 100].
Henri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, Ostéographie des mammifères récents et fossiles (Paris: J. B. Baillière et fils, 1839), l:A:36–39.
See B. Petronievics, ‘La loi de l’évolution non-corrélative,’ Rev. gén. sci. 30 (1919) 240–242.
A. Riehl, ‘Causalität und Identität’ Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie [Leipzig] 1 (1877) 373.
Albert Ladenburg, Histoire du développement de la chimie depuis Lavoisier jusqu’à nos jours, trans. Corvisy, 2nd ed. (Paris: A. Hermann et fils, 1911), p. 298 [Lectures in the History of the Development of Chemistry since the Time of Lavoisier, trans. Leonard Dobbin (Edinburgh: The Alembic Club, 1900), p. 309].
Georges Urbain and A. Sénéchal, Introduction à la chimie des complexes (Paris: A. Hermann et fils, 1913), pp. 50–53. It might be useful to dwell briefly on these divergencies, for as the theory becomes more established in science, scientists are apt to be less aware of them. Thus Urbain and Sénéchal’s statement that Werner’s theories were “closely modeled on those of organic chemistry” (p. 321) could lead us astray. The appraisal is correct, if one thinks of the way Werner utilizes the symmetry proper to the octahedron, since this part of the hypothesis is indeed strictly modeled on that of Le Bel and Van’t Hoff’s tetrahedron (on this subject, see p. 227 below). But with regard to the fundamental concept of the theory, that of valence, there is not agreement, but clear contradiction, a contradiction that Werner then strives to overcome with the aid of an auxiliary hypothesis.
Alfred Werner, Neuere Anschauungen auf dem Gebieteder anorganischen Chemie (Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1913), pp. 18–19.
Alfred Werner, Neuere Anschauungen auf dem Gebieteder anorganischen Chemie (Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1913), pp. 24.
Alfred Werner, Neuere Anschauungen auf dem Gebieteder anorganischen Chemie (Brunswick: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, 1913), pp. 26. Cf. also p. 36: “We thus arrive at the conclusion that the restricted theory of valence does not permit us to deduce useful representations concerning the formation and structure of these combinations, which is why we find ourselves forced to deduce their structure on the basis of their properties without taking into account the ordinary conceptions of valence.”
David Hume, Essais philosophiques sur l’entendement humain, trans. Renouvier and Pillon (Paris, 1878), p. 469 [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sect. 7, Pt. 2, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 75–76].
Harald Höffding, Der Totalitätsbegriff (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1917), p. 78.
Sophie Germain, Considérations générales sur l’état des sciences et des lettres aux différentes époques de leur culture, Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris: Paul Ritti, 1878), pp. 158–159. The text reads “ni être, n’être pas différent [neither be, not be different],” which is nonsense and an obvious printer’s error (the edition is full of them). Moreover, the original edition (Paris: Lachevardière, 1833) gives the correct reading instead [“ni n’être pas ni être différent (neither not be nor be different)”] (p. 57). [Nor is the 1927 edition of De l’Explication dans les sciences free of errors. We have corrected as many as possible, usually silently. In this case, what the 1879 (not 1878, as printed here, though correctly identified as 1879 elsewhere) edition actually says is “ni être ni n’être pas différent (neither be nor not be different)”]. Sophie Germain seems to have borrowed this notion in part from Laplace; see Appendix 3.
Edmond Goblot, Traité de logique (Paris: Armand Colin, 1918), pp. 291, 295–296.
Edmond Goblot, Essai sur la classification des sciences (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1898), p. 47: “Causality ... is a transitory notion, which rational science endeavors to eliminate and whose role is so unimportant in the theoretical explanation of phenomena that scientists have not even felt the need to clarify its equivocal and obscure meaning.”
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Meyerson, É. (1991). Deduction. In: Explanation in the Sciences. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 128. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3414-9_3
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