Thorstein Veblen
The Evolution of the Scientific Point of View
Read before the Kosmos Club, at the Univ. of California, May 4, 1908.

The University of California Chronicle, vol. 10, No. 4 (1908)
(= The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation and Other Essays, pp. 32-55)
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[32] A discussion of the scientific point of view which avowedly proceeds from 
this point of view itself has necessarily the appearance of an argument in a 
circle; and such in great part is the character of what here follows. It is in 
large part an attempt to explain the scientific point of view in terms of 
itself, but not altogether. This inquiry does not presume to deal with the 
origin or the legitimation of the postulates of science, but only with the 
growth of the habitual use of these postulates, and the manner of using them. 
The point of inquiry is the changes which have taken place in the secondary 
postulates involved in the scientific point of view - in great part a question 
of the progressive redistribution of emphasis among the preconceptions under 
whose guidance successive generations of scientists have gone to their work.

The sciences which are in any peculiar sense modern take as an (unavowed) 
postulate the fact of consecutive change. Their inquiry always centers upon some 
manner of process. This notion of process about which the researches of modern 
science cluster, is a notion of a sequence, or complex, of consecutive change in 
which the nexus of the sequence, that by virtue of which the change inquired 
into is consecutive, is the relation of cause and effect. The consecution, 
moreover, runs in terms of persistence of quantity or of force. In so far as the 
sci-[33]ence is of a modern complexion, in so far as it is not of the nature of 
taxonomy simply, the inquiry converges upon a matter of process; and it comes to 
rest, provisionally, when it has disposed of its facts in terms of process. But 
modern scientific inquiry in any case comes to rest only provisionally; because 
its prime postulate is that of consecutive change, and consecutive change can, 
of course, not come to rest except provisionally. By its own nature the inquiry 
cannot reach a final term in any direction. So it is something of a homiletical 
commonplace to say that the outcome of any serious research can only be to make 
two questions grow where one question grew before. Such is necessarily the case 
because the postulate of the scientist is that things change consecutively. It 
is an unproven and unprovable postulate - that is to say, it is a metaphysical 
preconception - but it gives the outcome that every goal of research is 
necessarily a point of departure; every term is transitional.(1*)

[34] A hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, scientific men were not in 
the habit of looking at the matter [35] in this way. At least it did not then 
seem a matter of course, lying in the nature of things, that scientific inquiry 
[36] could not reach a final term in any direction. To-day it is a matter of 
course, and will be so avowed without argument. Stated in the broadest terms, 
this is the substantial outcome of that nineteenth-century movement in science 
with which the name of Darwin is associated as a catch-word.
This use of Darwin's name does not imply that this epoch of science is mainly 
Darwin's work. What merit may belong to Darwin, specifically, in these premises, 
is a question which need not detain the argument. He may, by way of creative 
initiative, have had more or less to do with shaping the course of things 
scientific. Or, if you choose, his voice may even be taken as only one of the 
noises which the wheels of civilisation make when they go round. But by 
scientifically colloquial usage we have come to speak of pre-Darwinian and post-
Darwinian science, and to appreciate that there is a significant difference in 
the point of view between the scientific era which preceded and that which 
followed the epoch to which his name belongs.
Before that epoch the animus of a science was, on the whole, the animus of 
taxonomy; the consistent end of scientific inquiry was definition and 
classification, - as it still continues to be in such fields of science as have 
not been affected by the modern notion of consecutive change. The scientists of 
that era looked to a final term, a consummation of the changes which provoked 
their inquiry, as well as to a first beginning of the matters with which their 
researches were concerned. The questions of science were directed to the 
problem, essentially classi-[37]ficatory, of how things had been in the presumed 
primordial stable equilibrium out of which they, putatively, bad come, and bow 
they should be in the definitive state of settlement into which things were to 
fall as the outcome of the play of forces which intervened between this 
primordial and the definitive stable equilibrium. To the pre-Darwinian 
taxonomists the center of interest and attention, to which all scientific 
inquiry must legitimately converge, was the body of natural laws governing 
phenomena under the rule of causation. These natural laws were of the nature of 
rules of the game of causation. They formulated the immutable relations in which 
things "naturally" stood to one another before causal disturbance took place 
between them, the orderly unfolding of the complement of causes involved in the 
transition over this interval of transient activity, and the settled relations 
that would supervene when the disturbance bad passed and the transition from 
cause to effect had been consummated, - the emphasis falling on the 
consummation.
The characteristic feature by which post-Darwinian science is contrasted with 
what went before is a new distribution of emphasis, whereby the process of 
causation, the interval of instability and transition between initial cause and 
definitive effect, has come to take the first place in the inquiry; instead of 
that consummation in which causal effect was once presumed to come to rest. This 
change of the point of view was, of course, not abrupt or catastrophic. But it 
has latterly gone so far that modern science is becoming substantially a theory 
of the process of consecutive change, which is taken as a sequence of cumulative 
change, realized to be self-continuing or self-propagating and to have no final 
term. Questions of a primordial beginning and a definitive outcome have fallen 
into abeyance within the modern sciences, and [38] such questions are in a fair 
way to lose all claim to consideration at the hands of the scientists. Modern 
science is ceasing to occupy itself with the natural laws - the codified rules 
of the game of causation - and is concerning itself wholly with what has taken 
place and what is taking place.

Rightly seen from this ultra-modern point of view, this modern science and this 
point of view which it affects are, of course, a feature of the current cultural 
situation, - of the process of life as it runs along under our eyes. So also, 
when seen from this scientific point of view, it is a matter of course that any 
marked cultural era will have its own characteristic attitude and animus toward 
matters of knowledge, will bring under inquiry such questions of knowledge as 
lie within its peculiar range of interest, and will seek answers to these 
questions only in terms that are consonant with the habits of thought current at 
the time. That is to say, science and the scientific point of view will vary 
characteristically in response to those variations in the prevalent habits of 
thought which constitute the sequence of cultural development; the current 
science and the current scientific point of view, the knowledge sought and the 
manner of seeking it, are a product of the cultural growth. Perhaps it would all 
be better characterised as a by-product of the cultured growth.

This question of a scientific point of view, of a particular attitude and animus 
in matters of knowledge, is a question of the formation of habits of thought; 
and habits of thought are an outcome of habits of life. A scientific point of 
view is a consensus of habits of thought current in the community, and the 
scientist is constrained [39] to believe that this consensus is formed in 
response to a more or less consistent discipline of habituation to which the 
community is subjected, and that the consensus can extend only so far and 
maintain its force only so long as the discipline of habituation exercised by 
the circumstances of life enforces it and backs it up. The scheme of life, 
within which lies the scheme of knowledge, is a consensus of habits in the 
individuals which make up the community. The individual subjected to habituation 
is each a single individual agent, and whatever affects him in any one line of 
activity, therefore, necessarily affects him in some degree in all his various 
activities. The cultural scheme of any community is a complex of the habits of 
life and of thought prevalent among the members of the community. It makes up a 
more or less congruous and balanced whole, and carries within it a more or less 
consistent habitual attitude toward matters of knowledge - more or less 
consistent according as the community's cultural scheme is more or less 
congruous throughout the body of the population; and this in its turn is in the 
main a question of how nearly uniform or consonant are the circumstances of 
experience and tradition to which the several classes and members of the 
community are subject.
So, then, the change which has come over the scientific point of view between 
pre-Darwinian and post-Darwinian times is to be explained, at least in great 
part, by the changing circumstances of life, and therefore of habituation, among 
the people of Christendom during the life-history of modern science. But the 
growth of a scientific point of view begins farther back than modern 
Christendom, and a record of its growth would be a record of the growth of human 
culture. Modern science demands a genetic account of the phenomena with which it 
deals, [40] and a genetic inquiry into the scientific point of view necessarily 
will have to make up its account with the earlier phases of cultural growth. A 
life-history of human culture is a large topic, not to be attempted here even in 
the sketchiest outline. The most that can be attempted is a hasty review of 
certain scattered questions and salient points in this life-history.

In what manner and with what effect the idle curiosity of mankind first began to 
tame the facts thrown in its way, far back in the night of time, and to break 
them in under a scheme of habitual interpretation, what may have been the 
earliest norms of systematic knowledge, such as would serve the curiosity of the 
earliest generations of men in a way analogous to the service rendered the 
curiosity of later generations by scientific inquiry - all that is, of course, a 
matter of long-range conjecture, more or less wild, which cannot be gone into 
here. But among such peoples of the lower cultures as have been consistently 
observed, norms of knowledge and schemes for its systematization are always 
found. These norms and systems of knowledge are naive and crude, perhaps, but 
there is fair ground for presuming that out of the like norms and systems in the 
remoter ages of our own antecedents have grown up the systems of knowledge 
cultivated by the peoples of history and by their representatives now living.
It is not unusual to say that the primitive systems of knowledge are constructed 
on animistic lines; that animistic sequence is the rule to which the facts are 
broken in. This seems to be true, if "animism" be construed in a sufficiently 
naive and inchoate sense. But this is not the whole case. In their higher 
generalisations, in what Powell calls their "sophiology," it appears that the 
prim-[41]itive peoples are guided by animistic norms; they make up their 
cosmological schemes, and the like, in terms of personal or quasi-personal 
activity, and the whole is thrown into something of a dramatic form. Through the 
early cosmological lore runs a dramatic consistency which imputes something in 
the way of initiative and propensity to the phenomena that are to be accounted 
for. But this dramatisation of the facts, the accounting for phenomena in terms 
of spiritual or quasi-spiritual initiative, is by no means the whole case of 
primitive men's systematic knowledge of facts. Their theories are not all of the 
nature of dramatic legend, myth, or animistic life-history, although the broader 
and more picturesque generalisations may take that form. There always runs along 
by the side of these dramaturgic life-histories, and underlying them, an obscure 
system of generalisations in terms of matter-of-fact. The system of matter-of-
fact generalisations, or theories, is obscurer than the dramatic generalisations 
only in the sense that it is left in the background as being less picturesque 
and of less vital interest, not in the sense of being less familiar, less 
adequately apprehended, or less secure. The peoples of the lower cultures "know" 
that the broad scheme of things is to be explained in terms of creation, perhaps 
of procreation, gestation, birth, growth, life and initiative; and these matters 
engross the attention and stimulate speculation. But they know equally well the 
matter of fact that water will run down hill, that two stones are heavier than 
one of them, that an edge-tool will cut softer substances, that two things may 
be tied together with a string, that a pointed stick may be stuck in the ground, 
and the like. There is no range of knowledge that is held more securely by any 
people than such matters of fact; and these are generalisations from experience; 
they are theoretical knowledge, and they [42] are a matter of course. They 
underlie the dramatical generalisations of the broad scheme of things, and are 
so employed in the speculations of the myth-makers and the learned.
It may be that the exceptional efficiency of a given edge-tool, e.g., will be 
accounted for on animistic or quasi-personal grounds, - grounds of magical 
efficacy; but it is the exceptional behavior of such a tool that calls for 
explanation on the higher ground of animistic potency, not its work-day 
performance of common work. So also if an edge-tool should fail to do what is 
expected of it as a matter of course, its failure may require an explanation in 
other terms than matter-of -fact. But all that only serves to bring into 
evidence the fact that a scheme of generalisations in terms of matter-of-fact is 
securely held and is made use of as a sufficient and ultimate explanation of the 
more familiar phenomena of experience. These commonplace matter-of-fact 
generalisations are not questioned and do not clash with the higher scheme of 
things.
All this may seem like taking pains about trivialities. But the data with which 
any scientific inquiry has to do are trivialities in some other bearing than 
that one in which they are of account.
In all succeeding phases of culture, developmentally subsequent to the primitive 
phase supposed above, there is found a similar or analogous division of 
knowledge between a higher range of theoretical explanations of phenomena, an 
ornate scheme of things, on the one hand, and such an obscure range of matter-
of-fact generalisations as is here spoken of, on the other hand. And the 
evolution of the scientific point of view is a matter of the shifting fortunes 
which have in the course of cultural growth overtaken the one and the other of 
these two [43] divergent methods of apprehending and systematising the facts of 
experience.
The historians of human culture have, no doubt justly, commonly dealt with the 
mutations that have occurred on the higher levels of intellectual enterprise, in 
the more ambitious, more picturesque, and less secure of these two contrasted 
ranges of theoretical knowledge; while the lower range of generalisations, which 
has to do with work-day experience, has in great part been passed over with 
scant ceremony as lying outside the current of ideas, and as belonging rather 
among the things which engage the attention than among the modes, expedients and 
creations of this attention itself. There is good reason for this relative 
neglect of the work-day matters of fact. It is on the higher levels of 
speculative generalisation that the impressive mutations in the development of 
thought have taken place, and that the shifting of points of view and the 
clashing of convictions have drawn men into controversy and analysis of their 
ideas and have given rise to schools of thought. The matter-of-fact 
generalisations have met with relatively few adventures and have afforded little 
scope for intellectual initiative and profoundly picturesque speculation. On the 
higher levels speculation is freer, the creative spirit has some scope, because 
its excursions are not so immediately and harshly checked by material facts.
In these speculative ranges of knowledge it is possible to form and to maintain 
habits of thought which shall be consistent with themselves and with the habit 
of mind and run of tradition prevalent in the community at the time, though not 
thereby consistent with the material actualities of life in the community. Yet 
this range of speculative generalisation, which makes up the higher learning of 
the barbarian culture, is also controlled, checked, and [44] guided by the 
community's habits of life; it, too, is an integral part of the scheme of life 
and is an outcome of the habituation enforced by experience. But it does not 
rest immediately on men's dealings with the refractory phenomena of brute 
creation, nor is it guided, undisguised and directly, by the habitual material 
(industrial) occupations. The fabric of institutions intervenes between the 
material exigencies of life and the speculative scheme of things.
The higher theoretical knowledge, that body of tenets which rises to the dignity 
of a philosophical or scientific system, in the early culture, is a complex of 
habits of thought which reflect the habits of life embodied in the institutional 
structure of society -, while the lower, matter-of-fact generalisations of work-
day efficiency - the trivial matters of course - reflect the workmanlike habits 
of life enforced by the commonplace material exigencies under which men live. 
The distinction is analogous, and indeed, closely related, to the distinction 
between "intangible" and "tangible" assets. And the institutions are more 
flexible, they involve or admit a larger margin of error, or of tolerance, than 
the material exigencies. The latter are systematised into what economists have 
called "the state of the industrial arts," which enforce a somewhat rigorous 
standardisation of whatever knowledge falls within their scope; whereas the 
institutional scheme is a matter of law and custom, politics and religion, taste 
and morals, on all of which matters men have opinions and convictions, and on 
which all men "have a right to their own opinions." The scheme of institutions 
is also not necessarily uniform throughout the several classes of society; and 
the same institution (as, e.g., slavery, ownership, or royalty) does not impinge 
with the same effect on all parties touched by it. The discipline of [45] any 
institution of servitude, e.g., is not the same for the master as for the serf, 
etc. if there is a considerable institutional discrepancy between an tipper and 
a lower class in tile community, leading to divergent line of habitual interest 
or discipline; if by force of the cultural scheme the institutions of society 
are chiefly in the keeping of one class, whose attention is then largely 
engrossed with the maintenance of the scheme of law and order; while the 
workmanlike activities are chiefly in the hands of another class, in whose 
apprehension the maintenance of law and order is at the best a wearisome 
tribulation, there is likely to be a similarly considerable divergence or 
discrepancy between the speculative knowledge, cultivated primarily by the 
tipper class, and the work-day knowledge which is primarily in the keeping of 
the lower class. Such, in particular, will be the case if the community is 
organised on a coercive plan, with well-marked ruling and subject classes. The 
important and interesting institutions in such a case, those institutions which 
fill a large angle in men's vision and carry a great force of authenticity, are 
the institutions of coercive control, differential authority and subjection, 
personal dignity and consequence; and the speculative generalisations, the 
institutions of the realm of knowledge, are created in the image of these social 
institutions of status and personal force, and fall into a scheme drawn after 
the plan of the code of honor. The work-day generalisations, which emerge from 
the state of the industrial arts, concomitantly fall into a deeper obscurity, 
answering to the depth of indignity to which workmanlike efficiency sinks under 
such a cultural scheme; and they can touch and check the current speculative 
knowledge only remotely and incidentally. Under such a bifurcate scheme of 
culture, with its concomitant two-cleft systematisation of [46] knowledge, 
"reality" is likely to be widely dissociated from fact - that is to say, the 
realities and verities which are accepted as authentic and convincing on the 
plane of speculative generalisation; while science has no show - that is to say, 
science in that modern sense of the term which implies a close contact, if not a 
coincidence, of reality with fact.
Whereas, if the institutional fabric, the community's scheme of life, changes in 
such a manner as to throw the work-day experience into the foreground of 
attention and to center the habitual interest of the people on the immediate 
material relations of men to the brute actualities, then the interval between 
the speculative realm of knowledge, on the one hand, and the work-day 
generalisations of fact, on the other hand, is likely to lessen, and the two 
ranges of knowledge are likely to converge more or less effectually upon a 
common ground. When the growth of culture falls into such lines, these two 
methods and norms of theoretical formulation may presently come to further and 
fortify one another, and something in the way of science has at least a chance 
to arise.

On this view there is a degree of interdependence between the cultural situation 
and the state of theoretical inquiry. To illustrate this interdependence, or the 
concomitance between the cultural scheme and the character of theoretical 
speculation, it may be in place to call to mind certain concomitant variations 
of a general character which occur in the lower cultures between the scheme of 
life and the scheme of knowledge. In this tentative and fragmentary presentation 
of evidence there is nothing novel to be brought forward; still less is there 
anything to be offered which carries the weight of authority.
[47] On the lower levels of culture, even more decidedly than on the higher, the 
speculative systematisation of knowledge is prone to take the form of theology 
(mythology) and cosmology. This theological and cosmological lore serves the 
savage and barbaric peoples as a theoretical account of the scheme of things, 
and its characteristic traits vary in response to the variations of the 
institutional scheme under which the community lives. In a prevailingly 
peaceable agricultural community, such, e.g., as the more peaceable Pueblo 
Indians or the more settled Indians of the Middle West, there is little coercive 
authority, few and slight class distinctions involving superiority and 
inferiority; property rights are few, slight and unstable; relationship is 
likely to be counted in the female line. In such a culture the cosmological lore 
is likely to offer explanations of the scheme of things in terms of generation 
or germination and growth. Creation by fiat is not obtrusively or 
characteristically present. The laws of nature bear the character of an habitual 
behavior of things, rather than that of an authoritative code of ordinances 
imposed by an overruling providence. The theology is likely to be polytheistic 
in an extreme degree and in an extremely loose sense of the term, embodying 
relatively little of the suzerainty of God. The relation of the deities to 
mankind is likely to be that of consanguinity, and as if to emphasise the 
peaceable, non-coercive character of the divine order of things, the deities 
are, in the main, very apt to be females. The matters of interest dealt with in 
the cosmological theories are chiefly matters of the livelihood of the people, 
the growth and care of the crops, and the promotion of industrial ways and 
means.
With these phenomena of the peaceable culture may be contrasted the order of 
things found among a predatory [48] pastoral people - and pastoral peoples tend 
strongly to take on a predatory cultural scheme. Such a people will adopt male 
deities, in the main, and will impute to them a coercive, imperious, arbitrary 
animus and a degree of princely dignity. They will also tend strongly to a 
monotheistic, patriarchal scheme of divine government; to explain things in 
terms of creative fiat; and to a belief in the control of the natural universe 
by rules imposed by divine ordinance. The matters of prime consequence in this 
theology are matters of the servile relation of man to God, rather than the 
details of the quest of a livelihood. The emphasis falls on the glory of God 
rather than on the good of man. The Hebrew scriptures, particularly the 
Jahvistic elements, show such a scheme of pastoral cultural and predatory 
theoretical generalisations.
The learning cultivated on the lower levels of culture might be gone into at 
some length if space and time permitted, but even what has been said may serve 
to show, in the most general way, what are the characteristic marks of this 
savage and barbarian lore. A similarly summary characterisation of a cultural 
situation nearer home will bear more directly on the immediate topic of inquiry. 
The learning of mediaeval Christendom shows such a concomitance between the 
scheme of knowledge and the scheme of institutions, somewhat analogous to the 
barbaric Hebrew situation. The mediaeval scheme of institutions was of a 
coercive, authoritative character, essentially a scheme of graded mastery and 
graded servitude.. in which a code of honor and a bill of differential dignity 
held the most important place. The theology of that time was of a like 
character. It was a monotheistic, or rather a monarchical system, and of a 
despotic complexion. The cosmological scheme was drawn in terms of fiat: and the 
natural. philosophy was occupied, in the [49] main and in its most solemn 
endeavors, with the corollaries to be subsumed under the divine fiat. When the 
philosophical speculation dealt with facts it aimed to interpret them into 
systematic consistency with the glory of God and the divine purpose. The 
"realities" of the scholastic lore were spiritual, quasi-personal, intangible, 
and fell into a scale of differential dignity and prepotency. Matter-of-fact 
knowledge and work-day information were not then fit topics of dignified 
inquiry. The interval, or discrepancy, between reality and actuality was fairly 
wide. Throughout that era, of course, work-day knowledge also continually 
increased in volume and consistency; technological proficiency was gaining; the 
effective control of natural processes was growing larger and more secure; 
showing that matter-of-fact theories drawn from experience were being extended 
and were made increasing use of. Put all this went on in the field of industry; 
the matter-of-fact theories were accepted as substantial and ultimate only for 
the purposes of industry, only as technological maxims, and were beneath the 
dignity of science.
With the transition to modern times industry comes into the foreground in the 
west-European scheme of life, and the institutions of European civilisation fall 
into a more intimate relation with the exigencies of industry and technology. 
The technological range of habituation progressively counts for more in the 
cultural complex, and the discrepancy between the technological discipline and 
the discipline of law and order under the institutions then in force grows 
progressively less. The institutions of law and order take on a more impersonal, 
less coercive character. Differential dignity and invidious discriminations 
between classes gradually lose force.
The industry which so comes into the foreground and so affects the scheme of 
institutions is peculiar in that its [50] most obvious and characteristic trait 
is the workmanlike initiative and efficiency of the individual handicraftsman 
and the individual enterprise of the petty trader. The technology which embodies 
the theoretical substance of this industry is a technology of workmanship, in 
which the salient factors are personal skill, force and diligence. Such a 
technology, running as it does in great part on personal initiative, capacity, 
and application, approaches nearer to the commonplace features of the 
institutional fabric than many another technological system might; and its 
disciplinary effects in some considerable measure blend with those of the 
institutional discipline. The two lines of habituation, in the great era of 
handicraft and petty trade, even came to coalesce and fortify one another; as in 
the Organisation of the craft gilds and of the industrial towns. Industrial life 
and usage came to intrude creatively into the cultural scheme on the one hand 
and into the scheme of authentic knowledge on the other hand. So the body of 
matter-of-fact knowledge, in modern times, is more and more drawn into the 
compass of theoretical inquiry; and theoretical inquiry takes on more and more 
of the animus and method of technological generalisation. But the matter-of -
fact elements so drawn in are construed in terms of workmanlike initiative and 
efficiency, as required by the technological preconceptions of the era of 
handicraft.
In this way, it may be conceived. modern science comes into the field under the 
cloak of technology and gradually encroaches on the domain of authentic theory 
previously held by other, higher, nobler, more profound, more spiritual, more 
intangible conceptions and systems of knowledge. In this early phase of modern 
science its central norm and universal solvent is the concept of workmanlike 
initiative and efficiency. This is the new organon. [51] Whatever is to be 
explained must be reduced to this notation and explained in these terms; 
otherwise the inquiry does not come to rest. But when the requirements of this 
notation in terms of workmanship have been duly fulfilled the inquiry does come 
to rest.
By the early decades of the nineteenth century, with a passable degree of 
thoroughness, other grounds of validity and other interpretations of phenomena, 
other vouchers for truth and reality, bad been eliminated from the quest of 
authentic knowledge and from the terms in which theoretical results were 
conceived or expressed. The new organon had made good its pretensions. In this 
movement to establish the hegemony of workmanlike efficiency - under the style 
and title of the "law of causation," or of "efficient cause" - in the realm of 
knowledge, the English-speaking communities took the lead after the earlier 
scientific onset of the south-European communities had gone up in the smoke of 
war, politics and religion during the great era of state-making. The ground of 
this British lead in science is apparently the same as that of the British lead 
in technology which came to a head in the Industrial Revolution; and these two 
associated episodes of European civilisation are apparently both traceable to 
the relatively peaceable run of life, and so of habituation, in the English-
speaking communities, as contrasted with the communities of the continent.(2*)
Along with the habits of thought peculiar to the tech-[52]nology of handicraft, 
modern science also took over and assimilated much of the institutional 
preconceptions of the era of handicraft and petty trade. The "natural laws," 
with the formulation of which this early modern science is occupied, are the 
rules governing natural "uniformities of sequence"; and they punctiliously 
formulate the due procedure of any given cause creatively working out the 
achievement of a given effect, very much as the craft rules sagaciously 
specified the due routine for turning out a staple article of merchantable 
goods. But these "natural laws" of science are also felt to have something of 
that integrity and prescriptive moral force that belongs to the principles of 
the system of "natural rights" which the era of handicraft has contributed to 
the institutional scheme of later times. The natural laws were not only held to 
be true to fact. but they were also [53] felt to be right and good. They were 
looked upon is intrinsically meritorious and beneficent, and were held to carry 
a sanction of their own. This habit of uncritically imputing merit and equity to 
the "natural laws" of science continued in force through much of the nineteenth 
century; very much as the habitual acceptance of the principles of "natural 
rights" has held on by force of tradition long after the exigencies of 
experience out of which these "rights" sprang ceased to shape men's habits of 
life.(3*) This traditional attitude of submissive approval toward the "natural 
laws" of science has not Yet been wholly lost, even among the scientists of the 
passing generation, many of whom have uncritically invested these "laws" with a 
prescriptive rectitude and excellence; but so far, at least, has this animus 
progressed toward disuse that it is now chiefly a matter for expatiation in the 
pulpit, the accredited vent for the exudation of effete matter from the cultural 
organism.
The traditions of the handicraft technology lasted over as a commonplace habit 
of thought in science long after that technology bad ceased to be the decisive 
element in the industrial situation: while a new technology, with its 
inculcation of new habits of thought, new preconceptions, gradually made its way 
among the remnants of the old, altering them, blending with them, and little by 
little [54] superseding them. The new technological departure, which made its 
first great epoch in the so-called industrial revolution, in the technological 
ascendancy of the machine-process, brought a new and characteristic discipline 
into the cultural situation. The beginnings of the machine-era lie far back, no 
doubt; but it is only of late, during the past century at the most, that the 
machine-process can be said to have come into the dominant place in the 
technological scheme; and it is only later still that its discipline has, even 
in great part, remodeled the current preconceptions as to the substantial nature 
of what goes on in the current of phenomena whose changes excite the scientific 
curiosity. It is only relatively very lately, whether in technological work or 
in scientific inquiry, that men have fallen into the habit of thinking in terms 
of process rather than in terms of the workmanlike efficiency of a given cause 
working to a given effect.
These machine-made preconceptions of modern science, being habits of thought 
induced by the machine technology in industry and in daily life, have of course 
first and most consistently affected the character of those sciences whose 
subject matter lies nearest to the technological field of the machine-process; 
and in these material sciences the shifting to the machine -made point of view 
has been relatively very consistent, giving a highly impersonal interpretation 
of phenomena in terms of consecutive change, and leaving little of the ancient 
preconceptions of differential reality or creative causation. In such a science 
as physics or chemistry, e.g., we are threatened with the disappearance or 
dissipation of all stable and efficient substances; their place being supplied, 
or their phenomena being theoretically explained, by appeal to unremitting 
processes of inconceivably high-pitched consecutive change.
[55] In the sciences which lie farther afield from the technological domain, and 
which, therefore, in point of habituation, are remoter from the center of 
disturbance, the effect of the machine discipline may even yet be scarcely 
appreciable. In such lore as ethics, e.g., or political theory, or even 
economics, much of the norms of the régime of handicraft still stands over; and 
very much of the institutional preconceptions of natural rights, associated with 
the régime of handicraft in point of genesis, growth and content, is not only 
still intact in this field of inquiry, but it can scarcely even be claimed that 
there is ground for serious apprehension of its prospective obsolescence. 
Indeed, something even more ancient than handicraft and natural rights may be 
found surviving in good vigor in this "moral" field of inquiry, where tests of 
authenticity and reality are still sought and found by those who cultivate these 
lines of inquiry that lie beyond the immediate sweep of the machine's 
discipline. Even the evolutionary process of cumulative causation as conceived 
by the adepts of these sciences is infused with a preternatural, beneficent 
trend; so that "evolution" is conceived to mean amelioration or "improvement." 
The metaphysics of the machine technology has not yet wholly, perhaps not 
mainly, superseded the metaphysics of the code of honor in those lines of 
inquiry that have to do with human initiative and aspiration. Whether such a 
shifting of the point of view in these sciences shall ever be effected is still 
an open question. Here there still are spiritual verities which transcend the 
sweep of consecutive change. That is to say, there are still current habits of 
thought which definitively predispose their bearers to bring their inquiries to 
rest on grounds of differential reality and invidious merit.

NOTES:
1) It is by no means unusual for modern scientists to deny the truth of this 
characterization, so far as regards this alleged recourse to the concept of 
causation. They deny that such a concept - of efficiency, activity, and the like 
- enters, or can legitimately enter, intto their work, whether as an instrument 
of research or as a means or guide to theoretical formulation. They even deny 
the substantial continuity of the sequence of changes that excite their 
scientific attention. This attitude seems particularly to commend itself to 
those who by preference attend to the mathematical formulations of theory and 
who are chiefly occupied with proving up and working out details of the system 
of theory which have previously been left unsettled or uncovered.
The concept of causation is recognized to be a metaphysical postulate, a matter 
of imputation, not of observation; whereas it is claimed that scientific inquiry 
neither does nor can legitimately, nor, indeed, currently, make use of a 
postulate more metaphysical than the concept of an idle concomitance of 
variation, such as is adequately expressed in terms of mathematical function.
The contention seems sound, to the extent that the materials - essentially 
statistical materials - with which scientific inquiry [34] is occupied are of 
this non-committal character, and that the mathematical formulations of theory 
include no further element than that of idle variation. Such is necessarily the 
case because causation is a fact of imputation, not of observation, and so 
cannot be included among the data; and because nothing further than non-
committal variation can be expressed in mathematical terms. A bare notation of 
quantity can convey nothing further.
If it were the intention to claim only that the conclusions of the scientists 
are, or should be, as a matter of conservative caution, overtly stated in terms 
of function alone, then the contention might well be allowed. Causal sequence, 
efficiency or continuity is, of course, a matter of metaphysical imputation. It 
is not a fact of observation, and cannot be asserted of the facts of observation 
except as a trait imputed to them. It is so imputed, by scientists and others, 
as a matter of logical necessity, as a basis of a systematic knowledge of the 
facts of observation.
Beyond this, in their exercise of scientific initiative, as well as in the norms 
which guide the systematisation of scientific results, the contention will not 
be made good - at least not for the current phase of scientific knowledge. The 
claim, indeed, carries its own refutation. In making such a claim, both in 
rejecting the imputation of metaphysical postulates and in defending their 
position against their critics, the arguments put forward by the scientists run 
in causal terms. For the polemical purposes, where their antagonists are to be 
scientifically confuted, the defenders of the non-committal postulate of 
concomitance find that postulate inadequate. They are not content, in this 
precarious conjuncture, simply to attest a relation of idle quantitative 
concomitance (mathematical function) between the allegations of their critics, 
on the one hand. and their own controversial exposition of these matters on the 
other hand. They argue that they do not "make use of" such a postulate as 
"efficiency," whereas they claim to "make use of" the concept of function. But 
"make use of " is not a notion of functional variation but of causal efficiency 
in a somewhat gross and highly anthropomorphic form. The relation between their 
own thinking and the "principles" which they "apply" or the experiments and 
calculations which they "institute" in their "search" for facts, is not held to 
be of this non-committal kind. It will not be claimed that the shrewd insight 
and the bold initiative of a man eminent in the empirical sciences bear no more 
efficient or con-[35]sequential a relation than that of mathematical function to 
the ingenious experiments by which he tests his hypotheses and extends the 
secure bounds of human knowledge. Least of all is the masterly experimentalist 
himself in a position to deny that his intelligence counts for something more 
efficient than idle concomitance in such a case. The connection between his 
premises, hypotheses, and experiments, on the one hand, and his theoretical 
results, on the other hand, is not felt to be of the nature of mathematical 
function. Consistently adhered to, the principle of "function" or concomitant 
variation precludes recourse to experiment, hypotheses or inquiry - indeed, it 
precludes "recourse" to anything whatever. Its notation does not comprise 
anything so anthropomorphic.
The case is illustrated by the latter-day history of theoretical physics. Of the 
sciences which affect a non-committal attitude in respect of the concept of 
efficiency and which claim to get along with the notion of mathematical function 
alone, physics is the most outspoken and the one in which the claim has the best 
prima facie validity. At the same time, latter-day physicists, for a hundred 
years or more, have been much occupied with explaining how phenomena which to 
all appearance involve action at a distance do not involve action at a distance 
at all. The greater theoretical achievements of physics during the past century 
lie within the sweep of this (metaphysical) principle that action at a distance 
does not take place, that apparent action at a distance must be explained by 
effective contact, through a continuum, or by a material transference. But this 
principle is nothing better than an unreasoning repugnance on the part of the 
physicists to admitting action at a distance. The requirement of a continuum 
involves a gross form of the concept of efficient causation. The "functional" 
concept, concomitant variation, requires no contact and no continuum. 
Concomitance at a distance is quite as simple and convincing a notion as 
concomitance within contact or by the intervention of a continuum, if not more 
so. What stands in the way of its acceptance is the irrepressible 
anthropomorphism of the physicists. And yet the great achievements of physics 
are due to the initiative of men animated with this anthropomorphic repugnance 
to the notion of concomitant variation at a distance. All the generalisations on 
undulatory motion and translation belong here. The latter-day researches in 
light, electrical transmission, the theory of ions, together with what is known 
of the obscure and late-found [36] radiations and emanations, are to be credited 
to the same metaphysical preconception, which is never absent in any 
"scientific" inquiry in the field of physical science. It is only the "occult" 
and "Christian" "Sciences" that can dispense with this metaphysical postulate 
and take recourse to "absent treatment."
2) A broad exception may perhaps be taken at this point, to the effect that this 
sketch of the growth of the scientific animus overlooks the science of the 
Ancients. The scientific achievements of classical antiquity are a less obscure 
topic to-day than ever before during modern times, and the more there is known 
of them the larger is the credit given them. But it is to be noted that, (a) the 
relatively large and free growth of scientific in-[52]quiry in classical 
antiquity is to be found in the relatively peaceable and industrial Greek 
communities (with an industrial culture of unknown pre-Hellenic antiquity), and 
(b) that the sciences best and chiefly cultivated were those which rest on a 
mathematical basis, if not mathematical sciences in the simpler sense of the 
term. Now, mathematics occupies a singular place among the sciences, in that it 
is, in its pure form, a logical discipline simply; its subject matter being the 
logic of quantity, and its researches being of the nature of an analysis of the 
intellect's modes of dealing with matters of quantity. Its generalisations are 
generalisations of logical procedure, which are tested and verified by immediate 
self-observation. Such a science is in a peculiar degree, but only in a peculiar 
degree, independent of the detail-discipline of daily life, whether 
technological or institutional, and, given the propensity - the intellectual 
enterprise, or "idle curiosity" - to go into speculation in such a field, the 
results can scarcely vary in a manner to make the variants inconsistent among 
themselves; nor need the state of institutions or the state of the industrial 
arts seriously color or distort such analytical work in such a field. 
Mathematics is peculiarly independent of cultural circumstances, since it deals 
analytically with mankind's native gifts of logic, not with the ephemeral traits 
acquired by habituation.
3) "Natural laws," which are held to be not only correct formulations of the 
sequence of cause and effect in a given situation but also meritoriously right 
and equitable rules governing the run of events, necessarily impute to the facts 
and events in question a tendency to a good and equitable, if not beneficent, 
consummation., since it is necessarily the consummation, the effect considered 
as an accomplished outcome, that is to be adjudged good and equitable, if 
anything. Hence these "natural laws," as traditionally conceived, are laws 
governing the accomplishment of an end - that is to say, laws as to bow a 
sequence of cause and effect comes to rest in a final term.
--- The End ---