Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/40

 be just as misleading as undue trust in the Aristotelian forms for propositions.

The fourth stage in the development of the science is the introduction of the notion of pattern. Apart from attention to this concept of pattern, our understanding of Nature is crude in the extreme. For example, given an aggregate of carbon atoms and oxygen atoms, and given that the number of oxygen atoms and the number of carbon atoms are known, the properties of the mixture are unknown until the question of pattern is settled. How much free oxygen is there? How much free carbon? How much carbon monoxide? How much carbon dioxide? The answers to some of these questions, with the total quantities of oxygen and of carbon presupposed, will determine the answer to the rest. But, even allowing for this mutual determination, there will be an enormous number of alternative patterns for a mixtute of any reasonable amount of car-