re
a mathematical effort surpassing human powers. But it is enough for us
to know that these elements might be known, that their present
positions might be noted, and that a superhuman intellect might, by
submitting these data to mathematical operations, determine the
positions of the elements at any other moment of time. This conviction
is at the bottom of the questions we put to ourselves on the subject of
nature, and of the methods we employ to solve them. That is why every
law in static form seems to us as a provisional instalment or as a
particular view of a dynamic law which alone would give us whole and
definitive knowledge.

Let us conclude, then, that our science is not only distinguished from
ancient science in this, that it seeks laws, nor even in this, that its
laws set forth relations between magnitudes: we must add that the
magnitude to which we wish to be able to relate all others is time, and
that _modern science must be defined pre-eminently by its aspiration to
take time as an independent variable_. But with what time has it to do?

We have said before, and we cannot repeat too often, that the science of
matter proceeds like ordinary knowledge. It perfects this knowledge,
increases its precision and its scope, but it works in the same
direction and puts the same mechanism into play. If, therefore, ordinary
knowledge, by reason of the cinematographical mechanism to which it is
subjected, forbears to follow becoming in so far as becoming is moving,
the science of matter renounces it equally. No doubt, it distinguishes
as great a number of moments as we wish in the interval of time it
considers. However small the intervals may be at which it stops, it
authorizes us to divide them again if necessary. In contrast with
ancient science, which stopped at certain so-called essential moments,
it is occupied indifferently with any moment whatever. But it always
considers moments, always virtual stopping-places, always, in short,
immobilities. Which amounts to saying that real time, regarded as a
flux, or, in other words, as the very mobility of being, escapes the
hold of scientific knowledge. We have already tried to establish this
point in a former work. We alluded to it again in the first chapter of
this book. But it is necessary to revert to it once more, in order to
clear up misunderstandings.

When positive science speaks of time, what it refers to is the movement
of a certain mobile T on its trajectory.