Note 10 — Chapter III · DETAILED CONSIDERATION OF VARIOUS CONCEPTS OF PHYSICS

As so often in physics, we appear to be doing two things at once here. It is doubtful whether we can give a meaning to "definite initial condition" apart from the future behavior of the system, so that we have no real right to infer from uniform future behavior both a constancy of the laws of nature, independent of time, and a constancy of initial condition. I very much question whether a thoroughgoing operational analysis would show that there are really two independent concepts here, and whether the use of two formally quite different concepts is anything more than a convenience in expression. It seems to me that it may be just as meaningless to ask whether the laws of nature are independent of time as it was to ask with Clifford whether the absolute scale of magnitude may not be changing as the solar system travels through space.