But the author of the “Vestiges” is not the only writer who is responsible for the current pseudo-scientific mystifications which hang about the term “law.”  When I wrote my paper about “Scientific and Pseudo-Scientific Realism,” I had not read a work by the Duke of Argyll, “The Reign of Law,” which, I believe, has enjoyed, possibly still enjoys, a widespread popularity.  But the vivacity of the Duke’s attack led me to think it possible that criticisms directed elsewhere might have come home to him.  And, in fact, I find that the second chapter of the work in question, which is entitled “Law; its definitions,” is, from my point of view, a sort of “summa” of pseudo-scientific philosophy.  It will be worth while to examine it in some detail.

In the first place, it is to be noted that the author of the “Reign of Law” admits that “law,” in many cases, means nothing more than the statement of the order in which facts occur, or, as he says, “an observed order of facts” (p. 66).  But his appreciation of the value of accuracy of expression does not hinder him from adding, almost in the same breath, “In this sense the laws of nature are simply those facts of nature which recur according to rule” (p. 66).  Thus “laws,” which were rightly said to be the statement of an order of facts in one paragraph, are declared to be the facts themselves in the next.

We are next told that, though it may be customary and permissible to use “law” in the sense of a statement of the order of facts, this is a low use of the word; and, indeed, two pages farther on, the writer, flatly contradicting himself, altogether denies its admissibility.

An observed order of facts, to be entitled to the rank of a law, must be an order so constant and uniform as to indicate necessity, and necessity can only arise out of the action of some compelling force (p. 68).

This is undoubtedly one of the most singular propositions that I have ever met with in a professedly scientific work, and its rarity is embellished by another direct self-contradiction which it implies.  For on the preceding page (67), when the Duke of Argyll is speaking of the laws of Kepler, which he admits to be laws, and which are types of that which men of science understand by “laws,” he says that they are “simply and purely an order of facts.”  Moreover, he adds:  “A very large proportion of the laws of every science are laws of this kind and in this sense.”

If, according to the Duke of Argyll’s admission, law is understood, in this sense, thus widely and constantly by scientific authorities, where is the justification for his unqualified assertion that such statements of the observed order of facts are not “entitled to the rank” of laws?