ABSTRACT
The practical utility of science depends upon its ability to foretell the future. When the atomic bombs were dropped, it was expected that large numbers of Japanese would die, and they did. Such highly satisfactory results have led, in our day, to an admiration of science, which is due to the pleasure we derive from the satisfaction of our lust for power. The most powerful communities are the most scientific, though it is not the men of science who wield the power conferred by their knowledge. On the contrary, the actual men of science are rapidly sinking into the position of state prisoners, condemned to slave labour by brutal masters, like subject djinns in the Arabian Nights. But we must not waste any more time upon such pleasant topics. The power of science is due to its discovery of causal laws, and it is causal laws that are to occupy us in this chapter.
