140 struggling with the world
science, as the indispensable warrants of our causal judgments. When the
physics of the twentieth century cast aside the idea of an invariant space-
time background to physical events, it reasserted the idea of an immutable
framework of natural laws. Th is idea, however, may turn out to be incom-
patible with the implications of the fact that the universe has a history. Th e
laws may evolve coevally, although discontinuously, with the phenomena.
Causation may be a primitive feature of nature, and laws, symmetries,
and constants the form that causation assumes in the cooled- down uni-
verse rather than the timeless foundation of our causal judgments.
A fourth set of assumptions is that time is not fundamental. It begins
and ends, if indeed it is not more or less illusory. Yet the overthrow of
the other three sets of assumptions may drive us to the view that time is
fundamental rather than emergent; in fact, that it is the only aspect of
reality that is not emergent (contrary to the contemporary impulse to
conceive of time in spatial terms).
Consider what it would mean for cosmology to reject these four con-
nected sets of assumptions. Th eir combined rejection would amount to
a radical re orientation, within the inner sanctum of natural science, of
our most general beliefs not only about nature but also about science
itself. Such a re orientation may or may not turn out to be justifi ed, or it
may be justifi ed in some qualifi ed form. It is, however, wholly within
the prerogative of the human mind.
If undertaken, it would represent a striking and extreme instance of
transformations that have happened before, in the course of the history
of science, including the changes that resulted in the physics of Galileo
and Newton. Th e transformative impulse arises from the need to make
sense of our fragmentary but developing insight into how nature works.
Th e view of scientifi c explanation implied by the overturning of these
four series of assumptions would take form only aft er the fact. We would
understand fundamental aspects of nature diff erently before we had
fully grasped the implications of our new understanding for the prac-
tices and assumptions of science.
Th is power of the mind to transgress— its ability to defy its own
methods and presuppositions and to see more and diff erently than they
allow— expresses its second, anti- formulaic aspect. For it is the mind as
imagination that delights in its negative capability and acts always by a
succession of two moves. Th e fi rst move is distancing from the phe-