The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science Science and Method Part 51

Now, what are the mathematic ent.i.ties to which we attribute this character of beauty and elegance, and which are capable of developing in us a sort of esthetic emotion? They are those whose elements are harmoniously disposed so that the mind without effort can embrace their totality while realizing the details. This harmony is at once a satisfaction of our esthetic needs and an aid to the mind, sustaining and guiding; And at the same time, in putting under our eyes a well-ordered whole, it makes us foresee a mathematical law. Now, as we have said above, the only mathematical facts worthy of fixing our attention and capable of being useful are those which can teach us a mathematical law. So that we reach the following conclusion: The useful combinations are precisely the most beautiful, I mean those best able to charm this special sensibility that all mathematicians know, but of which the profane are so ignorant as often to be tempted to smile at it.

What happens then? Among the great numbers of combinations blindly formed by the subliminal self, almost all are without interest and without utility; but just for that reason they are also without effect upon the esthetic sensibility. Consciousness will never know them; only certain ones are harmonious, and, consequently, at once useful and beautiful. They will be capable of touching this special sensibility of the geometer of which I have just spoken, and which, once aroused, will call our attention to them, and thus give them occasion to become conscious.

This is only a hypothesis, and yet here is an observation which may confirm it: when a sudden illumination seizes upon the mind of the mathematician, it usually happens that it does not deceive him, but it also sometimes happens, as I have said, that it does not stand the test of verification; well, we almost always notice that this false idea, had it been true, would have gratified our natural feeling for mathematical elegance.

Thus it is this special esthetic sensibility which plays the role of the delicate sieve of which I spoke, and that sufficiently explains why the one lacking it will never be a real creator.

Yet all the difficulties have not disappeared. The conscious self is narrowly limited, and as for the subliminal self we know not its limitations, and this is why we are not too reluctant in supposing that it has been able in a short time to make more different combinations than the whole life of a conscious being could encompa.s.s. Yet these limitations exist. Is it likely that it is able to form all the possible combinations, whose number would frighten the imagination? Nevertheless that would seem necessary, because if it produces only a small part of these combinations, and if it makes them at random, there would be small chance that the _good_, the one we should choose, would be found among them.

Perhaps we ought to seek the explanation in that preliminary period of conscious work which always precedes all fruitful unconscious labor.

Permit me a rough comparison. Figure the future elements of our combinations as something like the hooked atoms of Epicurus. During the complete repose of the mind, these atoms are motionless, they are, so to speak, hooked to the wall; so this complete rest may be indefinitely prolonged without the atoms meeting, and consequently without any combination between them.

On the other hand, during a period of apparent rest and unconscious work, certain of them are detached from the wall and put in motion. They flash in every direction through the s.p.a.ce (I was about to say the room) where they are enclosed, as would, for example, a swarm of gnats or, if you prefer a more learned comparison, like the molecules of gas in the kinematic theory of gases. Then their mutual impacts may produce new combinations.

What is the role of the preliminary conscious work? It is evidently to mobilize certain of these atoms, to unhook them from the wall and put them in swing. We think we have done no good, because we have moved these elements a thousand different ways in seeking to a.s.semble them, and have found no satisfactory aggregate. But, after this shaking up imposed upon them by our will, these atoms do not return to their primitive rest. They freely continue their dance.

Now, our will did not choose them at random; it pursued a perfectly determined aim. The mobilized atoms are therefore not any atoms whatsoever; they are those from which we might reasonably expect the desired solution. Then the mobilized atoms undergo impacts which make them enter into combinations among themselves or with other atoms at rest which they struck against in their course. Again I beg pardon, my comparison is very rough, but I scarcely know how otherwise to make my thought understood.

However it may be, the only combinations that have a chance of forming are those where at least one of the elements is one of those atoms freely chosen by our will. Now, it is evidently among these that is found what I called the _good combination_. Perhaps this is a way of lessening the paradoxical in the original hypothesis.

Another observation. It never happens that the unconscious work gives us the result of a somewhat long calculation _all made_, where we have only to apply fixed rules. We might think the wholly automatic subliminal self particularly apt for this sort of work, which is in a way exclusively mechanical. It seems that thinking in the evening upon the factors of a multiplication we might hope to find the product ready made upon our awakening, or again that an algebraic calculation, for example a verification, would be made unconsciously. Nothing of the sort, as observation proves. All one may hope from these inspirations, fruits of unconscious work, is a point of departure for such calculations. As for the calculations themselves, they must be made in the second period of conscious work, that which follows the inspiration, that in which one verifies the results of this inspiration and deduces their consequences.

The rules of these calculations are strict and complicated. They require discipline, attention, will, and therefore consciousness. In the subliminal self, on the contrary, reigns what I should call liberty, if we might give this name to the simple absence of discipline and to the disorder born of chance. Only, this disorder itself permits unexpected combinations.

I shall make a last remark: when above I made certain personal observations, I spoke of a night of excitement when I worked in spite of myself. Such cases are frequent, and it is not necessary that the abnormal cerebral activity be caused by a physical excitant as in that I mentioned. It seems, in such cases, that one is present at his own unconscious work, made partially perceptible to the over-excited consciousness, yet without having changed its nature. Then we vaguely comprehend what distinguishes the two mechanisms or, if you wish, the working methods of the two egos. And the psychologic observations I have been able thus to make seem to me to confirm in their general outlines the views I have given.

Surely they have need of it, for they are and remain in spite of all very hypothetical: the interest of the questions is so great that I do not repent of having submitted them to the reader.

CHAPTER IV

CHANCE

I

"How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the ant.i.thesis of all law?" So says Bertrand at the beginning of his _Calcul des probabilt.i.tes_. Probability is opposed to cert.i.tude; so it is what we do not know and consequently it seems what we could not calculate. Here is at least apparently a contradiction, and about it much has already been written.

And first, what is chance? The ancients distinguished between phenomena seemingly obeying harmonious laws, established once for all, and those which they attributed to chance; these were the ones unpredictable because rebellious to all law. In each domain the precise laws did not decide everything, they only drew limits between which chance might act.

In this conception the word chance had a precise and objective meaning; what was chance for one was also chance for another and even for the G.o.ds.

But this conception is not ours to-day. We have become absolute determinists, and even those who want to reserve the rights of human free will let determinism reign undividedly in the inorganic world at least. Every phenomenon, however minute, has a cause; and a mind infinitely powerful, infinitely well-informed about the laws of nature, could have foreseen it from the beginning of the centuries. If such a mind existed, we could not play with it at any game of chance; we should always lose.

In fact for it the word chance would not have any meaning, or rather there would be no chance. It is because of our weakness and our ignorance that the word has a meaning for us. And, even without going beyond our feeble humanity, what is chance for the ignorant is not chance for the scientist. Chance is only the measure of our ignorance.

Fortuitous phenomena are, by definition, those whose laws we do not know.

But is this definition altogether satisfactory? When the first Chaldean shepherds followed with their eyes the movements of the stars, they knew not as yet the laws of astronomy; would they have dreamed of saying that the stars move at random? If a modern physicist studies a new phenomenon, and if he discovers its law Tuesday, would he have said Monday that this phenomenon was fortuitous? Moreover, do we not often invoke what Bertrand calls the laws of chance, to predict a phenomenon?

For example, in the kinetic theory of gases we obtain the known laws of Mariotte and of Gay-Lussac by means of the hypothesis that the velocities of the molecules of gas vary irregularly, that is to say at random. All physicists will agree that the observable laws would be much less simple if the velocities were ruled by any simple elementary law whatsoever, if the molecules were, as we say, _organized_, if they were subject to some discipline. It is due to chance, that is to say, to our ignorance, that we can draw our conclusions; and then if the word chance is simply synonymous with ignorance what does that mean? Must we therefore translate as follows?

"You ask me to predict for you the phenomena about to happen. If, unluckily, I knew the laws of these phenomena I could make the prediction only by inextricable calculations and would have to renounce attempting to answer you; but as I have the good fortune not to know them, I will answer you at once. And what is most surprising, my answer will be right."

So it must well be that chance is something other than the name we give our ignorance, that among phenomena whose causes are unknown to us we must distinguish fortuitous phenomena about which the calculus of probabilities will provisionally give information, from those which are not fortuitous and of which we can say nothing so long as we shall not have determined the laws governing them. For the fortuitous phenomena themselves, it is clear that the information given us by the calculus of probabilities will not cease to be true upon the day when these phenomena shall be better known.

The director of a life insurance company does not know when each of the insured will die, but he relies upon the calculus of probabilities and on the law of great numbers, and he is not deceived, since he distributes dividends to his stockholders. These dividends would not vanish if a very penetrating and very indiscreet physician should, after the policies were signed, reveal to the director the life chances of the insured. This doctor would dissipate the ignorance of the director, but he would have no influence on the dividends, which evidently are not an outcome of this ignorance.

II

To find a better definition of chance we must examine some of the facts which we agree to regard as fortuitous, and to which the calculus of probabilities seems to apply; we then shall investigate what are their common characteristics.

The first example we select is that of unstable equilibrium; if a cone rests upon its apex, we know well that it will fall, but we do not know toward what side; it seems to us chance alone will decide. If the cone were perfectly symmetric, if its axis were perfectly vertical, if it were acted upon by no force other than gravity, it would not fall at all. But the least defect in symmetry will make it lean slightly toward one side or the other, and if it leans, however little, it will fall altogether toward that side. Even if the symmetry were perfect, a very slight tremor, a breath of air could make it incline some seconds of arc; this will be enough to determine its fall and even the sense of its fall which will be that of the initial inclination.

A very slight cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect which we can not help seeing, and then we say this effect is due to chance. If we could know exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial instant, we should be able to predict exactly the situation of this same universe at a subsequent instant. But even when the natural laws should have no further secret for us, we could know the initial situation only _approximately_. If that permits us to foresee the subsequent situation _with the same degree of approximation_, this is all we require, we say the phenomenon has been predicted, that it is ruled by laws. But this is not always the case; it may happen that slight differences in the initial conditions produce very great differences in the final phenomena; a slight error in the former would make an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible and we have the fortuitous phenomenon.

Our second example will be very a.n.a.logous to the first and we shall take it from meteorology. Why have the meteorologists such difficulty in predicting the weather with any certainty? Why do the rains, the tempests themselves seem to us to come by chance, so that many persons find it quite natural to pray for rain or s.h.i.+ne, when they would think it ridiculous to pray for an eclipse? We see that great perturbations generally happen in regions where the atmosphere is in unstable equilibrium. The meteorologists are aware that this equilibrium is unstable, that a cyclone is arising somewhere; but where they can not tell; one-tenth of a degree more or less at any point, and the cyclone bursts here and not there, and spreads its ravages over countries it would have spared. This we could have foreseen if we had known that tenth of a degree, but the observations were neither sufficiently close nor sufficiently precise, and for this reason all seems due to the agency of chance. Here again we find the same contrast between a very slight cause, unappreciable to the observer, and important effects, which are sometimes tremendous disasters.

Let us pa.s.s to another example, the distribution of the minor planets on the zodiac. Their initial longitudes may have been any longitudes whatever; but their mean motions were different and they have revolved for so long a time that we may say they are now distributed _at random_ along the zodiac. Very slight initial differences between their distances from the sun, or, what comes to the same thing, between their mean motions, have ended by giving enormous differences between their present longitudes. An excess of the thousandth of a second in the daily mean motion will give in fact a second in three years, a degree in ten thousand years, an entire circ.u.mference in three or four million years, and what is that to the time which has pa.s.sed since the minor planets detached themselves from the nebula of Laplace? Again therefore we see a slight cause and a great effect; or better, slight differences in the cause and great differences in the effect.

The game of roulette does not take us as far as might seem from the preceding example. a.s.sume a needle to be turned on a pivot over a dial divided into a hundred sectors alternately red and black. If it stops on a red sector I win; if not, I lose. Evidently all depends upon the initial impulse I give the needle. The needle will make, suppose, ten or twenty turns, but it will stop sooner or not so soon, according as I shall have pushed it more or less strongly. It suffices that the impulse vary only by a thousandth or a two thousandth to make the needle stop over a black sector or over the following red one. These are differences the muscular sense can not distinguish and which elude even the most delicate instruments. So it is impossible for me to foresee what the needle I have started will do, and this is why my heart throbs and I hope everything from luck. The difference in the cause is imperceptible, and the difference in the effect is for me of the highest importance, since it means my whole stake.

III

Permit me, in this connection, a thought somewhat foreign to my subject.

Some years ago a philosopher said that the future is determined by the past, but not the past by the future; or, in other words, from knowledge of the present we could deduce the future, but not the past; because, said he, a cause can have only one effect, while the same effect might be produced by several different causes. It is clear no scientist can subscribe to this conclusion. The laws of nature bind the antecedent to the consequent in such a way that the antecedent is as well determined by the consequent as the consequent by the antecedent. But whence came the error of this philosopher? We know that in virtue of Carnot's principle physical phenomena are irreversible and the world tends toward uniformity. When two bodies of different temperature come in contact, the warmer gives up heat to the colder; so we may foresee that the temperature will equalize. But once equal, if asked about the anterior state, what can we answer? We might say that one was warm and the other cold, but not be able to divine which formerly was the warmer.

And yet in reality the temperatures will never reach perfect equality.

The difference of the temperatures only tends asymptotically toward zero. There comes a moment when our thermometers are powerless to make it known. But if we had thermometers a thousand times, a hundred thousand times as sensitive, we should recognize that there still is a slight difference, and that one of the bodies remains a little warmer than the other, and so we could say this it is which formerly was much the warmer.

So then there are, contrary to what we found in the former examples, great differences in cause and slight differences in effect. Flammarion once imagined an observer going away from the earth with a velocity greater than that of light; for him time would have changed sign.

History would be turned about, and Waterloo would precede Austerlitz.

Well, for this observer, effects and causes would be inverted; unstable equilibrium would no longer be the exception. Because of the universal irreversibility, all would seem to him to come out of a sort of chaos in unstable equilibrium. All nature would appear to him delivered over to chance.

IV

Now for other examples where we shall see somewhat different characteristics. Take first the kinetic theory of gases. How should we picture a receptacle filled with gas? Innumerable molecules, moving at high speeds, flash through this receptacle in every direction. At every instant they strike against its walls or each other, and these collisions happen under the most diverse conditions. What above all impresses us here is not the littleness of the causes, but their complexity, and yet the former element is still found here and plays an important role. If a molecule deviated right or left from its trajectory, by a very small quant.i.ty, comparable to the radius of action of the gaseous molecules, it would avoid a collision or sustain it under different conditions, and that would vary the direction of its velocity after the impact, perhaps by ninety degrees or by a hundred and eighty degrees.

And this is not all; we have just seen that it is necessary to deflect the molecule before the clash by only an infinitesimal, to produce its deviation after the collision by a finite quant.i.ty. If then the molecule undergoes two successive shocks, it will suffice to deflect it before the first by an infinitesimal of the second order, for it to deviate after the first encounter by an infinitesimal of the first order, and after the second hit, by a finite quant.i.ty. And the molecule will not undergo merely two shocks; it will undergo a very great number per second. So that if the first shock has multiplied the deviation by a very large number _A_, after _n_ shocks it will be multiplied by _A_^{_n_}. It will therefore become very great not merely because _A_ is large, that is to say because little causes produce big effects, but because the exponent _n_ is large, that is to say because the shocks are very numerous and the causes very complex.

Take a second example. Why do the drops of rain in a shower seem to be distributed at random? This is again because of the complexity of the causes which determine their formation. Ions are distributed in the atmosphere. For a long while they have been subjected to air-currents constantly changing, they have been caught in very small whirlwinds, so that their final distribution has no longer any relation to their initial distribution. Suddenly the temperature falls, vapor condenses, and each of these ions becomes the center of a drop of rain. To know what will be the distribution of these drops and how many will fall on each paving-stone, it would not be sufficient to know the initial situation of the ions, it would be necessary to compute the effect of a thousand little capricious air-currents.

And again it is the same if we put grains of powder in suspension in water. The vase is ploughed by currents whose law we know not, we only know it is very complicated. At the end of a certain time the grains will be distributed at random, that is to say uniformly, in the vase; and this is due precisely to the complexity of these currents. If they obeyed some simple law, if for example the vase revolved and the currents circulated around the axis of the vase, describing circles, it would no longer be the same, since each grain would retain its initial alt.i.tude and its initial distance from the axis.

We should reach the same result in considering the mixing of two liquids or of two fine-grained powders. And to take a grosser example, this is also what happens when we shuffle playing-cards. At each stroke the cards undergo a permutation (a.n.a.logous to that studied in the theory of subst.i.tutions). What will happen? The probability of a particular permutation (for example, that bringing to the _n_th place the card occupying the [phi](_n_)th place before the permutation) depends upon the player's habits. But if this player shuffles the cards long enough, there will be a great number of successive permutations, and the resulting final order will no longer be governed by aught but chance; I mean to say that all possible orders will be equally probable. It is to the great number of successive permutations, that is to say to the complexity of the phenomenon, that this result is due.

A final word about the theory of errors. Here it is that the causes are complex and multiple. To how many snares is not the observer exposed, even with the best instrument! He should apply himself to finding out the largest and avoiding them. These are the ones giving birth to systematic errors. But when he has eliminated those, admitting that he succeeds, there remain many small ones which, their effects acc.u.mulating, may become dangerous. Thence come the accidental errors; and we attribute them to chance because their causes are too complicated and too numerous. Here again we have only little causes, but each of them would produce only a slight effect; it is by their union and their number that their effects become formidable.