§ 1. Scientific inquirers give the name of Empirical Laws to those uniformities which observation or experiment has shown to exist, but on which they hesitate to rely in cases varying much from those which have been actually observed, for want of seeing any reason why such a law should exist. It is implied, therefore, in the notion of an empirical law, that it is not an ultimate law; that if true at all, its truth is capable of being, and requires to be, accounted for. It is a derivative law, the derivation of which is not yet known. To state the explanation, the why, of the empirical law, would be to state the laws from which it is derived—the ultimate causes on which it is contingent. And if we knew these, we should also know what are its limits; under what conditions it would cease to be fulfilled.
The periodical return of eclipses, as originally ascertained by the persevering observation of the early Eastern astronomers, was an empirical law, until the general laws of the celestial motions had accounted for it. The following are empirical laws still waiting to be resolved into the simpler laws from which they are derived: the local laws of the flux and reflux of the tides in different places; the succession of certain kinds of weather to certain appearances of sky; the apparent exceptions to the almost universal truth that bodies expand by increase of temperature; the law that breeds, both animal and vegetable, are improved by crossing; that gases have a strong tendency to permeate animal membranes; that substances containing a very high proportion of nitrogen (such as hydrocyanic acid and morphia) are powerful poisons; that when different metals are fused together the alloy is harder than the various elements; that the number of atoms of acid required to neutralize one atom of any base is equal to the number of atoms of oxygen in the base; that the solubility of substances in one another depends,1 at least in some degree, on the similarity of their elements.
An empirical law, then, is an observed uniformity, presumed to be resolvable [pg 367] into simpler laws, but not yet resolved into them. The ascertainment of the empirical laws of phenomena often precedes by a long interval the explanation of those laws by the Deductive Method; and the verification of a deduction usually consists in the comparison of its results with empirical laws previously ascertained.
§ 2. From a limited number of ultimate laws of causation, there are necessarily generated a vast number of derivative uniformities, both of succession and co-existence. Some are laws of succession or of co-existence between different effects of the same cause; of these we had examples in the last chapter. Some are laws of succession between effects and their remote causes, resolvable into the laws which connect each with the intermediate link. Thirdly, when causes act together and compound their effects, the laws of those causes generate the fundamental law of the effect, namely, that it depends on the co-existence of those causes. And, finally, the order of succession or of co-existence which obtains among effects necessarily depends on their causes. If they are effects of the same cause, it depends on the laws of that cause; if on different causes, it depends on the laws of those causes severally, and on the circumstances which determine their co-existence. If we inquire further when and how the causes will co-exist, that, again, depends on their causes; and we may thus trace back the phenomena higher and higher, until the different series of effects meet in a point, and the whole is shown to have depended ultimately on some common cause; or until, instead of converging to one point, they terminate in different points, and the order of the effects is proved to have arisen from the collocation of some of the primeval causes, or natural agents. For example, the order of succession and of co-existence among the heavenly motions, which is expressed by Kepler’s laws, is derived from the co-existence of two primeval causes, the sun, and the original impulse or projectile force belonging to each planet.2 Kepler’s laws are resolved into the laws of these causes and the fact of their co-existence.