passes out of existence.

On the earth, the science of geology has shown that the

apparently permanent
features of the surface are always changing. Thus, as a result of the flow of wa
ter and the action of wind,
existing rocks and mountains, and even continents, are continually being worn aw
ay while subterranean
motions are continually leading to the formation of new ones. The science of bio
logy shows that life is a
continual process of inexhaustible complexity in which various kinds of organism
s come into being, live,
and die. Indeed, every organism is maintained in existence by characteristic met
abolic processes taking
place within it, as well as by the motions necessary for it to obtain food and o
ther materials from its
environment. Over longer time, as a result of the effects of natural selection a
nd other factors, the forms of
life have had to evolve; and in this process, new species of organisms have come
into existence while old
species have died out. Over still longer periods of time, life itself has come i
nto existence out of a basis of
inanimate matter, very probably as a result of motions at the inorganic level of
the kind suggested by
Opharin*; and as conditions change it may later have to pass out of existence, p
erhaps to give way to
something new, of which we can at present have no idea. In chemistry one sees th
at as a result of thermal
agitation of the molecules and other causes, different chemical compounds must r
eact to produce new kinds
of compounds, while already existing kinds of compounds must be dissociated into
simpler compounds. In
physics we find, at the atomic level and below, a universal and ceaseless motion
which follows as a
necessary consequence of the laws appropriate to these levels, and which is disc
overed to be more violent
the deeper we penetrate into it. Thus, we have atomic motions, electronic and nu
cleonic motions, field
motions, quantum fluctuations, probable fluctuations in a subquantum mechanical
level, etc. Moreover, as
happens at the higher levels, not only do the quantitative properties of things
change in these motions (e.g.
position, velocity, etc., of the various particles, the strength of the various
fields, etc.), but so also do the basic
qualities defining the modes of being of the entities, such as molecules, atoms,
nucleons, mesons, etc., with
which we deal in this theory.
In sum, then, no feature of anything has as yet been found which does not underg
o necessary and
characteristic motions. In other words, such motions are not inessential disturb
ances superimposed from
outside on an otherwise statically existing kind of matter. Rather, they are inh
erent and indispensable to
what matter is, so that it would in general not even make sense to discuss matte
r apart from the motions
which are necessary to define its mode of existence.
Now, the various motions taking place in matter have the further very important
characteristic that, in
general, they are not and cannot be smoothly co-ordinated to produce simple and
regular results. Rather,
they are often quite complex and poorly co-ordinated and contain within them a g
reat many relatively

independent and contradictory tendencies.

There are two general reasons why such contradictory tendencies must develop; fi
rst because there are
always chance disturbances arising from essentially independent causes, and seco
ndly, because the
systematic processes that are necessary for the very existence of the things und
er discussion are, as a rule,
contradictory in some of their long-run effects. We shall give here a few exampl
es taken from the fields that
were discussed in the previous paragraph. Thus, in the field of astronomy, we fi
nd that partly as a result of
chance disturbances from other galaxies and partly as a result of the laws of mo
tion under the gravitational
forces originating in the same galaxy, stars have a very complicated and irregul
ar distribution of velocities
going in all sorts of directions, etc., with the result that some systems of sta
rs are being disrupted, while new
systems are formed. On the surface of the earth, storms, earthquakes, etc., whic
h are of chance origin
relative to the life of a given individual, may produce conditions in which this
individual cannot continue to
* See Chapter I, Section 8.
MORE GENERAL CONCEPT OF NATURAL LAW 101
exist; while a similar result can be brought about by old age, which follows fro
m the effects of the very
metabolic processes that are necessary to maintain life. Going on to the subject
of physics, we see that both
the effects of chance fluctuations and of the operation of systematic causal law
s is continually leading to
complicated and violent fluctuations in the various levels, which are not at all
well co-ordinated with each
other, and which quite often lead to contradictory tendencies in the motions. In
deed, these contradictory
tendencies not only follow necessarily from the laws governing the motions, but
must exist in order for
many things to possess characteristic properties which help define what they are
. For example, a gas would
not have its typical properties if all the molecules had a strong tendency to mo
ve together in a co-ordinated
way. More generally, the relative autonomy in the modes of being of different th
ings implies a certain
independence of these things, and this in turn implies that contradictions betwe
en these things can arise. For
if things were co-ordinated in such a way that they could not come into contradi
ction with each other, they
could not be really independent.