this fluid and insensible to that of our matter. It is clear that the science of these beings would differ absolutely from ours and that it would be idle to seek an 'invariant' common to these two sciences. Or again, if these beings rejected our logic and did not admit, for instance, the principle of contradiction.
But truly I think it without interest to examine such hypotheses.
And then, if we do not push whimsicality so far, if we introduce only fictitious beings having senses analogous to ours and sensible to the same impressions, and moreover admitting the principles of our logic, we shall then be able to conclude that their language, however different from ours it may be, would always be capable of translation. Now the possibility of translation implies the existence of an invariant. To translate is precisely to disengage this invariant. Thus, to decipher a cryptogram is to seek what in this document remains invariant, when the letters are permuted.
What now is the nature of this invariant it is easy to understand, and a word will suffice us. The invariant laws are the relations between the crude facts, while the relations between the 'scientific facts' remain always dependent on certain conventions.
CHAPTER XI
Science and Reality
5. Contingence and Determinism
I do not intend to treat here the question of the contingence of the laws of nature, which is evidently insoluble, and on which so much has already been written. I only wish to call attention to what different meanings have been given to this word, contingence, and how advantageous it would be to distinguish them.