Abstract
MY attention has been directed by Mr. John Bradley of Christ's Hospital, Horsham, to a passage by Prof. J. H. Muirhead1, containing the words: “The truth is that what is called a natural law is itself not so much a statement of fact as of a standard or type to which facts have been found more or less to approximate. This is true even in inorganic nature.” My statement2 that the variation of observations from a mathematical formula is quite unknown to philosophical critics has therefore at least one exception, which I am glad to acknowledge. But much in philosophical works would receive additional force from its recognition; for example, in the later parts of Prof. L. S. Stebbing's “Philosophy and the Physicists”. Mr. Bradley directs attention also to a passage in Plato: “I have never been able to find out anything for certain and have had to be content with the probable.” Locke said the same thing at greater length, and W. E. Johnson made important constructive contributions to the quantitative theory ; so I did not intend to disparage the contributions of philosophers to this side of the question.
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References
"The Elements of Ethics" (1910), pp. 37–38
NATURE, 141, 672–676, 716–719 (1938).
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JEFFREYS, H. Science, Logic and Philosophy. Nature 141, 977 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141977a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141977a0
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