The Uncertainty of Analysis

Reiss, Timothy J.

Published by Cornell University Press

Reiss, Timothy J.
The Uncertainty of Analysis: Problems in Truth, Meaning, and Culture.
Cornell University Press, 2018.
Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/72582.

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https://muse.jhu.edu/book/72582

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 Appendix to Chapter 1

T he analysis of cause and effect cited in Chapter 1 (see note 59) is

excerpted here from Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, ed.
Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1935), 6. 66-87 (pp. 46-66): "Detached Ideas on Vitally Im-
portant Topics" (1898); lecture 4, "Causation and Force." Copyright 1935,
1963, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by
permission of the Harvard University Press.

But the grand principie of causation which is generally held to be the

most certain of all truths and literally beyond the possibility of doubt (so
much so that if a scientific man seeks to limit its truth it is thought
pertinent to attack his sincerity and moral character generally) involves
three propositions to which I beg your particular attention. The first is,
that the state of things at any one instant is completely and exactly deter-
mined by the state of things at one other instant. The second is that the
cause, or determining state of things, precedes the effect or determined
state of things in time. The third is that no fact determines a fact preceding
it in time in the same sense in which it determines a fact following it in
time. These propositions are generally held to be self-evident truths; but
it is further urged that whether they be so or not, they are indubitably
proved by modero science. In truth, however, all three of them are in flat
contradiction to the principies of mechanics. According to the dominant
mechanical philosophy, nothing is real in the physical universe except
particles of matter with their masses, their relative positions in space at
different instants of time, and the immutable laws of the relations of those
three elements of space, time, and matter. Accordingly, at any one instant
all that is real is the masses and their positions, together with the laws of
their motion. But according to Newton's second law of motion the posi-
tions of the masses at any one instant are not determined by their posi-
tions at any other single instant, even with the aid of the laws. On the
contrary, that which is determined is an acceleration. Now an acceleration
is the relation of the position at one instant not to the position at another
[286]
 Appendix 287

instant, but to the positions at a second and a third instant. Let a, b, e be

the positions of a particle at three instants very near to one another, and
at equal intervals of time, say, for convenience, one second.
Then we may make atable thus:

Dates Positions Velocities Acceleration

o·
..
:s
(b - a)/(1' - o·) [(e - b)/(2 5 - 1•) -
(b- a)/(1 5 - O")]/
(e - b)/(2" - 1") (lW-OW)=
2s
(e - 2b + a)/(1 W - OW) 2

Or if the intervals are not equal:

Dates Positions Velocities Acceleration

:s
(b - a)l(t 1 - tu) [(e - b)/(t 2 - t 1) -
(b - a)l(t 1 - t 11 )]/
(e- b)/(t 2 - t 1) ( 112(t2 + t.) - '12(t 1 + t11)
= [e(t 1 - t 0 ) - b(t2 - 10 )
+ a(t2 - t 1)]/(t2 - t 1)
(t 1 - 111 ) • '12(t 2 - 2t 1 + t 11)*
*(t2 - 2t 1 + t11) should be (t2 - t11 ) [editors' note].

It will be perceived that there is an essential thirdness, which the prin-

cipie of casualty fails to recognize, so that its first proposition is false. The
second proposition, that the cause precedes the effect in time, is equally
false. The effect is the acceleration. The cause that produces this effect
under the law of force is, according to the doctrine of the conservation of
energy, the relative positions of the particles. Now the acceleration which
the position requir~s does not come later than the assumption of that
position. It is, on the contrary, absolutely simultaneous with it. Thus, the
second proposition of the principie of causation is false. The third is
equally so. This proposition is that no event determines a previous one in
the same sense in which it determines a subsequent one. But, according
to the law of the conservation of energy, the position of the particle relative
to the center of force, expressed by b, determines what the acceleration
shall be at the moment the particle is in that position. That is to say, taking
the number b, whose value expresses the position of the particle, we can
calculate from this number alone, by the application of a rule supplied by
the law of the force, a number which 1 may denote by Fb, which is the
 288 The Uncertainty of Analysis

e- 2b +a
numerical value of the acceleration . So that we have the
(1 V2s - QI/2s)2
e- 2b +a
equation = Fb. Now, if we know the positions, a and b, of
(11/2" - ov2s)2
the particle at the two earlier dates, this equation does enable us to calcu-
late the position, e, of the particle at the last date. But since a ande enter
into this equation in the same way, and since the difference of dates in the
denominator is squared so that if they are interchanged it makes no
difference (because the square of the negative of a number is the [square
ofthe] number itself), it follows that the very same rule, by which we could
calculate the value of e, that is, the position at the latest of the three dates,
from a and b, those at the two earlier dates, may usually be applied, and
in precisely the same form, to calculating the position, a, of the particles
at the earliest date, from e and b, its positions at the two later dates. Thus,
we see that, according to the law of energy, the positions at the two later
instants determine the position at the earliest instant, in precisely the
same way, and no other, in which the positions at the two earlier instants
determine the position at the latest instant. In short, so far as phenomena
governed by the laws of the conservation of energy are concerned, the
future determines the past in precisely the same way in which the past
determines the future; and for those cases, at least, it is a mere human
and subjective fashion of looking at things which makes us prefer one of
those modes of statement to the other. Thus, all three of the propositions
involved in the principie of causation are in flat contradiction to the sci-
ence of mechanics. [6.68-69]