V.
But that is not all. In physical reality one cause does not produce a given effect, but a multitude of distinct causes contribute to produce it, without our having any means of discriminating the part of each of them.
Physicists seek to make this distinction; but they make it only approximately, and, however they progress, they never will make it except approximately. It is approximately true that the motion of the pendulum is due solely to the earth's attraction; but in all rigor every attraction, even of Sirius, acts on the pendulum.
Under these conditions, it is clear that the causes which have produced a certain effect will never be reproduced except approximately. Then we should modify our postulate and our definition. Instead of saying: 'The same causes take the same time to produce the same effects,' we should say: 'Causes almost identical take almost the same time to produce almost the same effects.'
Our definition therefore is no longer anything but approximate. Besides, as M. Calinon very justly remarks in a recent memoir:[1]
Our definition is therefore not yet satisfactory; it is certainly not that which the astronomers of whom I spoke above implicitly adopt, when they affirm that the terrestrial rotation is slowing down.
What meaning according to them has this affirmation? We can only understand it by analyzing the proofs they give of their proposition. They say first that the friction of the tides producing heat must destroy vis viva. They invoke therefore the principle of vis viva, or of the conservation of energy.
They say next that the secular acceleration of the moon, calculated according to Newton's law, would be less than that deduced from observations unless the correction relative to the slowing down of the terrestrial rotation were made. They invoke therefore Newton's law. In other words, they define duration in the following way: time should be so defined that Newton's law and that of vis viva may be verified. Newton's law is an experimental truth; as such it is only approximate, which shows that we still have only a definition by approximation.
If now it be supposed that another way of measuring time is adopted, the experiments on which Newton's law is founded would none the less have the same meaning. Only the enunciation of the law would be different, because it would be translated into another
- ↑ 'Etude sur les diverges grandeurs,' Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1897.
