ABSTRACT
Karl Pearson defended a regularity view of causality. In agreement with Hume's "official position," he insisted that there is no necessity involved in causality. Causes do not produce their effects. There is only the experience of a repeated sequence of perceptions. The "formula" of which Pearson speaks is the "scientific law." Consistent with his view on causality, he insisted that a law is nothing more than an economical summary of sequences of sense perceptions. Thus, Copernicus achieved "an immense advance in brevity and accuracy of description" by referring observations of planetary motions to a heliostatic system. Kepler in turn summarized an immense amount of observed data under just three laws of motion. In a review of Pearson's The Grammar of Science, Peirce complained that, by restricting the evaluation of theories to descriptive adequacy, Pearson failed to acknowledge the important role of prediction in scientific practice.
