The Grammar of Science - Chapter III

Chapter III

"The Scientific Law"

1. Scientific Law is of a totally different nature from civil law; it does not involve an intelligent lawgiver, a command and a corresponding duty. It is a brief description in mental shorthand of as wide a range as possible of the sequences of our sense-impressions.
2. There are two distinct meanings to natural law: the mere routine of perception, and the scientific law or formula describing the field of nature. The "reason" in natural law is only obvious when we speak of law in the latter sense, and then it is really placed there by the human mind. Thus the supposed reason behind natural law does not enable us to pass from the routine of perceptions to anything of the nature of reason behind the world of sense-impression.
3. The fact that the human reflective faculty is able to express the routine of perceptions in mental formulae may be due to this routine being a product of the perceptive faculty itself. The perceptive faculty appears to be selective and to have developed in co-ordination with the reflective faculty. Of the world outside sensation science can only logically infer chaos, or the absence of the conditions of knowledge; no human concept, such as order, reason, or consciousness, can be logically projected into it.