Page:Chance, love, and logic - philosophical essays (IA chancelovelogicp00peir 0).pdf/25

 *ing open a possible explanation of the genesis of the laws of nature and an interpretation of them in accordance with the theorems of probability, so fruitful in physical science as well as in practical life. So the doctrine of love is not only a cosmologic one, showing how chance feeling generates order or rational diversity through the habit of generality or continuity, but it also gives us the meaning of truth in social terms, in showing that the test as to whether any proposition is true postulates an indefinite number of co-*operating investigators. On its logical side the doctrine of love (agapism) also recognized the important fact that general ideas have a certain attraction which makes us divine their nature even though we cannot clearly determine their precise meaning before developing their possible consequences.

Of the doctrine of continuity we are told expressly that "synechism is not an ultimate absolute metaphysical doctrine. It is a regulative principle of logic," seeking the thread of identity in diverse cases and avoiding hypotheses that this or that is ultimate and, therefore, inexplicable. (Examples of such hypotheses are: the existence of absolutely accurate or uniform laws of nature, the eternity and absolute likeness of all atoms, etc.) To be sure, the synechist cannot deny that there is an element of the inexplicable or ultimate, since it is directly forced upon him. But he cannot regard it as a source of explanation. The assumption of an inexplicability is a barrier on the road to science. "The form under which alone anything can be understood is the form of generality which is the same thing