order,
but are inevitably treated as man-made formulae for grouping and
predicting the events which verify them. The labours of physicists like
Mach, Duhem, and Ostwald, point to alternative formulations of new
hypotheses for the best established laws. The physics of Newton are no
longer final, and the notion of 'energy' is a dangerous rival to the
older conception of 'matter.' It is, of course, indifferent to the
philosopher whether the new physics are successful in superseding the
old or not. What it concerns him to note is that dogmatic confidence in
the finality of scientific laws has given place to a belief that our
"laws" are only working formulae for scientific purposes, and that no
science can truly boast of having read off the mind of the Deity. As Sir
J.J. Thomson neatly puts it, a scientific theory, for the enlightened
modern scientist, is a 'policy and not a creed.' Science has become
content to be only 'a conceptual shorthand,' provided that its message
be humanly intelligible. It no longer claims truth because abstractly
and absolutely it 'corresponds with Nature,' but because it yields a
convenient means of mastering the flux of events.

Even mathematics, long the pattern of absolute knowledge, has not
escaped the stigma of relativity. 'Metageometries' have been invented by
Riemann and Lobatschewski as rivals to the assumptions of Euclid, and
the brilliant writings of Poincare have explained the human devices on
which mathematical concepts rest. Euclidean geometry is reduced to a
useful interpretation of the data of experience; it is not theoretically
the only one. Its superior validity is dependent upon its use when
applied to the physical world. Even mathematics, therefore, lend
themselves to the philosophic inference drawn by Henri Bergson and
others, that all conceptual systems of the human mind have a merely
conditional truth, depending on the circumstances of their application.

2. Another fountain-head of Pragmatic philosophy has been Darwinism.
Indeed, the Pragmatic is the only philosophizing which has completely
assimilated Evolution. The insight into the real fluidity of natural
species ought long ago to have toned down the artificial rigidity of
logical classifications. To know reality man can no longer rest in a
'timeless' contemplation of a static system; he must expand his thoughts
so as to cope with a perpetually changing process. Since the world
changes, his 'truths' must change to fit it