could become, plain and obvious, as if the
veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be
torn away. From this point of view it would make no difference even though
the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of
inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in
the first of our main propositions (p. 35).

In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the
relation of "explanation" and "description" to one another, and on what is
meant by "establishing laws" and "understanding" in general. The aim of
all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously
means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to
know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of
things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how
they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The
first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must
rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world,
grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.

But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only
preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all
its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing
is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to
discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and
processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers
the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths,
the inviolable order and connection in things and occurrences, and he
formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which
he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can
now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty
as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view,
and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his
science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with
phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied
as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and
general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities,
but we should not have science. And to discover this network of
uniform