A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive · John Stuart Mill
Chapter XIII.
Miscellaneous Examples Of The Explanation Of Laws Of Nature. § 1. The most striking example which the history of science presents, of the explanation of laws of causation and other uniformities of sequence among special phenomena, by resolving them into laws of greater simplicity and generality, is the great Newtonian generalization; respecting which typical instance, so much having already been said, it is sufficient to call attention to the great number and variety of the special observed uniformities, which are in this case accounted for, either as particular cases, or as consequences, of one very simple law of universal nature. The simple fact of a tendency of every particle of matter toward every other particle, varying inversely as the square of the distance, explains the fall of bodies to the earth, the revolutions of the planets and satellites, the motions (so far as known) of comets, and all the various regularities which have been observed in these special phenomena; such as the elliptical orbits, and the variations from exact ellipses; the relation between the solar distances of the planets and the duration of their revolutions; the precession of the equinoxes; the tides, and a vast number of minor astronomical truths. Mention has also been made in the preceding chapter of the explanation of the phenomena of magnetism from laws of electricity; the special laws of magnetic agency having been affiliated by deduction to observed laws of electric action, in which they have ever since been considered to be included as special cases. An example not so complete in itself, but even more fertile in consequences, having been the starting-point of the really scientific study of physiology, is the affiliation, commenced by Bichat, and carried on by subsequent biologists, of the properties of the bodily organs, to the elementary properties of the tissues into which they are anatomically decomposed.
Another striking instance is afforded by Dalton’s generalization, commonly known as the atomic theory. It had been known from the very commencement of accurate chemical observation, that any two bodies combine chemically with one another in only a certain number of proportions; but those proportions were in each case expressed by a percentage—so many parts (by weight) of each ingredient, in 100 of the compound (say 35 and a fraction of one element, 64 and a fraction of the other); in which mode of statement no relation was perceived between the proportion in which a given element combines with one substance, and that in which it combines with others. The great step made by Dalton consisted in perceiving that a unit of weight might be established for each substance, such that by supposing the substance to enter into all its combinations in the ratio either of that unit, or of some low multiple of that unit, all the different proportions, previously expressed by percentages, were found to result. Thus 1 being assumed as the unit of hydrogen, if 8 were then taken as that of oxygen, the combination of one unit of hydrogen with one unit of oxygen would produce the exact proportion of weight between the two substances which is known to exist in water; the combination of one unit of hydrogen with two units of oxygen would produce the proportion which exists in the other compound of the same two elements, called peroxide of hydrogen; and the combinations of hydrogen and of oxygen with all other substances, would correspond with the supposition that those elements enter into combination by single units, or twos, or threes, of the numbers assigned to them, 1 and 8, and the other substances by ones or twos or threes of other determinate numbers proper to each. The result is that a table of the equivalent numbers, or, as they are called, atomic weights, of all the elementary substances, comprises in itself, and scientifically explains, all the proportions in which any substance, elementary or compound, is found capable of entering into chemical combination with any other substance whatever.
For instance, “while soluble crystalloids are always highly sapid, soluble colloids are singularly insipid,” as might be expected; for, as the sentient extremities of the nerves of the palate “are probably protected by a colloidal membrane,” impermeable to other colloids, a colloid, when tasted, probably never reaches those nerves. Again, “it has been observed that vegetable gum is not digested in the stomach; the coats of that organ dialyse the soluble food, absorbing crystalloids, and rejecting all colloids.” One of the mysterious processes accompanying digestion, the secretion of free muriatic acid by the coats of the stomach, obtains a probable hypothetical explanation through the same law. Finally, much light is thrown upon the observed phenomena of osmose (the passage of fluids outward and inward through animal membranes) by the fact that the membranes are colloidal. In consequence, the water and saline solutions contained in the animal body pass easily and rapidly through the membranes, while the substances directly applicable to nutrition, which are mostly colloidal, are detained by them.(154) The property which salt possesses of preserving animal substances from putrefaction is resolved by Liebig into two more general laws, the strong attraction of salt for water, and the necessity of the presence of water as a condition of putrefaction. The intermediate phenomenon which is interpolated between the remote cause and the effect, can here be not merely inferred but seen; for it is a familiar fact, that flesh upon which salt has been thrown is speedily found swimming in brine.
The second of the two factors (as they may be termed) into which the preceding law has been resolved, the necessity of water to putrefaction, itself affords an additional example of the Resolution of Laws. The law itself is proved by the Method of Difference, since flesh completely dried and kept in a dry atmosphere does not putrefy; as we see in the case of dried provisions and human bodies in very dry climates. A deductive explanation of this same law results from Liebig’s speculations. The putrefaction of animal and other azotized bodies is a chemical process, by which they are gradually dissipated in a gaseous form, chiefly in that of carbonic acid and ammonia; now to convert the carbon of the animal substance into carbonic acid requires oxygen, and to convert the azote into ammonia requires hydrogen, which are the elements of water. The extreme rapidity of the putrefaction of azotized substances, compared with the gradual decay of non-azotized bodies (such as wood and the like) by the action of oxygen alone, he explains from the general law that substances are much more easily decomposed by the action of two different affinities upon two of their elements than by the action of only one.
Tetanus produced by the lesion of a nerve. Dr. Brown-Séquard thinks it highly probable that hydrophobia is a phenomenon of a similar nature; Morbid changes in the nutrition of the brain and spinal cord, manifesting themselves by epilepsy, chorea, hysteria, and other diseases, occasioned by lesion of some of the nervous extremities in remote places, as by worms, calculi, tumors, carious bones, and in some cases even by very slight irritations of the skin. § 4. From the foregoing and similar instances, we may see the importance, when a law of nature previously unknown has been brought to light, or when new light has been thrown upon a known law by experiment, of examining all cases which present the conditions necessary for bringing that law into action; a process fertile in demonstrations of special laws previously unsuspected, and explanations of others already empirically known.
For instance, Faraday discovered by experiment, that voltaic electricity could be evolved from a natural magnet, provided a conducting body were set in motion at right angles to the direction of the magnet; and this he found to hold not only of small magnets, but of that great magnet, the earth. The law being thus established experimentally, that electricity is evolved, by a magnet, and a conductor moving at right angles to the direction of its poles, we may now look out for fresh instances in which these conditions meet. Wherever a conductor moves or revolves at right angles to the direction of the earth’s magnetic poles, there we may expect an evolution of electricity. In the northern regions, where the polar direction is nearly perpendicular to the horizon, all horizontal motions of conductors will produce electricity; horizontal wheels, for example, made of metal; likewise all running streams will evolve a current of electricity, which will circulate round them; and the air thus charged with electricity may be one of the causes of the Aurora Borealis. In the equatorial regions, on the contrary, upright wheels placed parallel to the equator will originate a voltaic circuit, and water-falls will naturally become electric.
For a second example, it has been proved, chiefly by the researches of Professor Graham, that gases have a strong tendency to permeate animal membranes, and diffuse themselves through the spaces which such membranes inclose, notwithstanding the presence of other gases in those spaces. Proceeding from this general law, and reviewing a variety of cases in which gases lie contiguous to membranes, we are enabled to demonstrate or to explain the following more special laws: 1st. The human or animal body, when surrounded with any gas not already contained within the body, absorbs it rapidly; such, for instance, as the gases of putrefying matters: which helps to explain malaria. 2d. The carbonic acid gas of effervescing drinks, evolved in the stomach, permeates its membranes, and rapidly spreads through the system. 3d. Alcohol taken into the stomach passes into vapor, and spreads through the system with great rapidity (which, combined with the high combustibility of alcohol, or in other words its ready combination with oxygen, may perhaps help to explain the bodily warmth immediately consequent on drinking spirituous liquors). 4th. In any state of the body in which peculiar gases are formed within it, these will rapidly exhale through all parts of the body; and hence the rapidity with which, in certain states of disease, the surrounding atmosphere becomes tainted. 5th.
The putrefaction of the interior parts of a carcass will proceed as rapidly as that of the exterior, from the ready passage outward of the gaseous products. 6th. The exchange of oxygen and carbonic acid in the lungs is not prevented, but rather promoted, by the intervention of the membrane of the lungs and the coats of the blood-vessels between the blood and the air. It is necessary, however, that there should be a substance in the blood with which the oxygen of the air may immediately combine; otherwise, instead of passing into the blood, it would permeate the whole organism: and it is necessary that the carbonic acid, as it is formed in the capillaries, should also find a substance in the blood with which it can combine; otherwise it would leave the body at all points, instead of being discharged through the lungs. § 5. The following is a deduction which confirms, by explaining, the empirical generalization, that soda powders weaken the human system. These powders, consisting of a mixture of tartaric acid with bicarbonate of soda, from which the carbonic acid is set free, must pass into the stomach as tartrate of soda. Now, neutral tartrates, citrates, and acetates of the alkalis are found, in their passage through the system, to be changed into carbonates; and to convert a tartrate into a carbonate requires an additional quantity of oxygen, the abstraction of which must lessen the oxygen destined for assimilation with the blood, on the quantity of which the vigorous action of the human system partly depends.
The instances of new theories agreeing with and explaining old empiricisms, are innumerable. All the just remarks made by experienced persons on human character and conduct, are so many special laws, which the general laws of the human mind explain and resolve. The empirical generalizations on which the operations of the arts have usually been founded, are continually justified and confirmed on the one hand, or corrected and improved on the other, by the discovery of the simpler scientific laws on which the efficacy of those operations depends. The effects of the rotation of crops, of the various manures, and other processes of improved agriculture, have been for the first time resolved in our own day into known laws of chemical and organic action, by Davy, Liebig, and others. The processes of the medical art are even now mostly empirical: their efficacy is concluded, in each instance, from a special and most precarious experimental generalization: but as science advances in discovering the simple laws of chemistry and physiology, progress is made in ascertaining the intermediate links in the series of phenomena, and the more general laws on which they depend; and thus, while the old processes are either exploded, or their efficacy, in so far as real, explained, better processes, founded on the knowledge of proximate causes, are continually suggested and brought into use.(155) Many even of the truths of geometry were generalizations from experience before they were deduced from first principles. The quadrature of the cycloid is said to have been first effected by measurement, or rather by weighing a cycloidal card, and comparing its weight with that of a piece of similar card of known dimensions.
Associations being of two sorts, either between synchronous, or between successive impressions; and the influence of the law which renders associations stronger in proportion to the pleasurable or painful character of the impressions, being felt with peculiar force in the synchronous class of associations; it is remarked by the writer referred to, that in minds of strong organic sensibility synchronous associations will be likely to predominate, producing a tendency to conceive things in pictures and in the concrete, richly clothed in attributes and circumstances, a mental habit which is commonly called Imagination, and is one of the peculiarities of the painter and the poet; while persons of more moderate susceptibility to pleasure and pain will have a tendency to associate facts chiefly in the order of their succession, and such persons, if they possess mental superiority, will addict themselves to history or science rather than to creative art. This interesting speculation the author of the present work has endeavored, on another occasion, to pursue further, and to examine how far it will avail toward explaining the peculiarities of the poetical temperament.(157) It is at least an example which may serve, instead of many others, to show the extensive scope which exists for deductive investigation in the important and hitherto so imperfect Science of Mind.
It would, however, be a mistake to expect that those great generalizations, from which the subordinate truths of the more backward sciences will probably at some future period be deduced by reasoning (as the truths of astronomy are deduced from the generalities of the Newtonian theory), will be found in all, or even in most cases, among truths now known and admitted. We may rest assured, that many of the most general laws of nature are as yet entirely unthought of; and that many others, destined hereafter to assume the same character, are known, if at all, only as laws or properties of some limited class of phenomena; just as electricity, now recognized as one of the most universal of natural agencies, was once known only as a curious property which certain substances acquired by friction, of first attracting and then repelling light bodies. If the theories of heat, cohesion, crystallization, and chemical action are destined, as there can be little doubt that they are, to become deductive, the truths which will then be regarded as the _principia_ of those sciences would probably, if now announced, appear quite as novel(158) as the law of gravitation appeared to the contemporaries of Newton; possibly even more so, since Newton’s law, after all, was but an extension of the law of weight—that is, of a generalization familiar from of old, and which already comprehended a not inconsiderable body of natural phenomena. The general laws of a similarly commanding character, which we still look forward to the discovery of, may not always find so much of their foundations already laid.
These general truths will doubtless make their first appearance in the character of hypotheses; not proved, nor even admitting of proof, in the first instance, but assumed as premises for the purpose of deducing from them the known laws of concrete phenomena. But this, though their initial, can not be their final state. To entitle an hypothesis to be received as one of the truths of nature, and not as a mere technical help to the human faculties, it must be capable of being tested by the canons of legitimate induction, and must actually have been submitted to that test. When this shall have been done, and done successfully, premises will have been obtained from which all the other propositions of the science will thenceforth be presented as conclusions, and the science will, by means of a new and unexpected Induction, be rendered Deductive.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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