EMPIRICAL LAWS.
Empirical laws are derivative laws, of which the derivation is not known. They are observed uniformities, which we compare with the result of any deduction to verify it; but of which the why, and also the limits, are unrevealed, through their being, though resolvable, not yet resolved into the simpler laws. They depend usually, not solely on the ultimate laws into which they are resolvable; but on those, together with an ultimate fact, viz. the mode of coexistence of some of the component elements of the universe. Hence their untrustworthiness for scientific purposes; for, till they have been resolved (and then a derivative law ceases to be empirical), we cannot know whether they result from the different effects of one cause, or from effects of different causes; that is, whether they depend on laws, or on laws and a collocation. And if they thus depend on a collocation, they can be received as true only within the limits of time and space, and also circumstance, in which they have been observed, since the mode of the collocation of the permanent causes is not reducible to a law, there being no principle known to us as governing the distribution and relative proportions of the primæval natural agents.
Uniformities cannot be proved by the Method of Agreement alone to be laws of causation; they must be tested by the Method of Difference, or explained deductively. But laws of causation themselves are either ultimate or derivative. Signs, previous to actual proof by resolution of them, of their being derivative, are, either that we can surmise the existence of a link between the known antecedent and the consequent, as e.g. in the laws of chemical action; or, that the antecedent is some very complex fact, the effects of which are probably (since most complex cases fall under the Composition of Causes) compounded of the effects of its different elements. But the laws which, though laws of causation, are thus presumably derivative laws only, need, equally with the uniformities which are not known to be laws of causation at all, to be explained by deduction (which they then in turn verify), and are less certain than when they have been resolved into the ultimate laws. Consequently they come under the definition of Empirical Laws, equally with uniformities not known to be laws of causation. However, the latter are far more uncertain; for as, till they are resolved, we cannot tell on how many collocations, as well as laws, they may not depend, we must not rely on them beyond the exact limits in which the observations were made. Therefore, the name Empirical Laws will generally be confined here to these.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHANCE, AND ITS ELIMINATION.
Empirical laws are certain only in those limits within which they have been observed to be true. But, even within those limits, the connection of two phenomena may, as the same effect may be produced by several different causes, be due to Chance; that is, it may, though being, as all facts must be, the result of some law, be a coincidence whence, simply because we do not know all the circumstances, we have no ground to infer an uniformity. When neither Deduction, nor the Method of Difference, can be applied, the only way of inferring that coincidences are not casual, is by observing the frequency of their occurrence, not their absolute frequency, but whether they occur more often than chance would (that is, more often than the positive frequency of the phenomena would) account for. If, in such cases, we could ascend to the causes of the two phenomena, we should find at some stage some cause or causes common to both. Till we can do this, the fact of the connection between them is only an empirical law; but still it is a law.
Sometimes an effect is the result partly of chance, and partly of law: viz. when the total effect is the result partly of the effects of casual conjunctions of causes, and partly of the effects of some constant cause which they blend with and modify. This is a case of Composition of Causes. The object being to find how much of the result is attributable to a given constant cause, the only resource, when the variable causes cannot be wholly excluded from the experiment, is to ascertain what is the effect of all of them taken together, and then to eliminate this, which is the casual part of the effect, in reckoning up the results. If the results of frequent experiments, in which the constant cause is kept invariable, oscillate round one point, that average or middle point is due to the constant cause, and the variable remainder to chance; that is, to causes the coexistence of which with the constant cause was merely casual. The test of the sufficiency of such an induction is, whether or not an increase in the number of experiments materially alters the average.
We can thus discover not merely how much of the effect, but even whether any part of it whatever is due to a constant cause, when this latter is so uninfluential as otherwise to escape notice (e.g. the loading of dice). This case of the Elimination of Chance is called The discovery of a residual phenomenon by eliminating the effects of chance.