115

Logic 115

causes on a principle to which the guesses shall have some degree of analogy and a principle not changing too rapidly.
In the case of natural selection if it takes a dozen generations to sufficiently adapt a stock to a given change of the environment this change must not take place more rapidly or the stock will be extirpated instead of being adapted.
It is no light question how it is that a stuck in some degree out of adjustment to it environment immediately begins to sport and that not wildly but in ways having some sort of relation to the change needed.
Still more remarkable is the fact that a man before whom a scientific problem is placed immediately begins to make guesses not wildly remote from the true guess.
The physicist who observes a strange phenomenon in his laboratory for example does not begin by wondering whether the particular aspect of the planets at that moment