52
PARTISAN REVIEJT
observations not irrelevam. In the first place, there is a perfectly
clear sense in which science does supply answers as to "why"
things happen and are what they are. Thus, if we ask why the
moon becomes eclipsed at certain times, the answer is that at those
times the moon moves into the earth's shadow; if we ask why the
moon behaves in this way, the answer is given in part by the theory
of gravitation; if we ask why bodies behave in the manner predi·
cated by this theory, the answer is supplied by the general theory
of relativity. On the other hand, if we repeat this question con–
cerning relativity theory, no further answer is at present forth–
coming, so that for the present at least this theory is an "ultimate"
or "brute" fact.
Further~ore,
if some day relativity theory should
become absorbed into a unified field-theory embracing both macro–
scopic and microscopic phenomena, the unified field-theory would
explain why the equations of relativity theory hold, but at the
same time it would become the (perhaps only temporary) "ulti–
mate" structural fact. In science the answer to the question "why"
is therefore always a theory, from which the specific fact at issue
may be deduced when suitable initial conditions are introduced.
The point of these familiar remarks is that no matter how far
the question "why" is pressed-and it may be pressed indefinitely
-it must terminate in a theory which is itself not logically dem–
onstrable. For no theory which explains why things happen as
they do and not otherwise can be a logically necessary truth. It
follows that those who seek to discern the laws of nature to be
necessary, as well as those who "hope to see that it is necessary
that there should be an order of nature," are violating an ele–
mentary canon of discoursive thought.
In the second place, it is obvious that anyone who invokes an
"absolute cause" (or God) to explain "why" the world exists,
merely postpones settling his accounts with the logic of his ques–
tion: for the Being who has been postulated as the Creator of the
world is simply one more being into the reasons of whose existence
it is possible to inquire.
If
those who invoke such a Being declare
that such questions about His existence are not legitimate, they
surmount a
di~culty
only by dogmatically cutting-short a discus–
sion when the intellectual current runs against them.
If,
on the
other hand, the question is answered with the assertion that God
is his own cause, the question is resolved only by falling back
