The world of experience

... The world of experience seems to be understandable and user-friendly primarily because it is reliable, in the sense that it is regular. This is not to say that everything happens in the same way on every occasion. Some people die of lung cancer, some do not. But underlying the contingent happenstances of existence there seems to be order and regularity. The world runs according to rules or laws. Moreover, for all that these laws lead to different effects, it seems to us that in themselves they are necessary. It is not mere chance that water boils when it is heated, any more than it is chance that blue-eyed parents tend to have blue-eyed children or that spring follows winter as winter follows autumn. Wherein lies the source of this necessity? For Plato it lay in the relations between the Forms, and thus had at least the status of mathematical and logical

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