A typical package-deal, used by professors of philosophy, runs as follows: to
prove the assertion that there is no such thing as “necessity” in the universe,
a professor declares that just as this country did not have to have fifty
states, there could have been forty-eight or fifty-two—so the solar system did
not have to have nine planets, there could have been seven or eleven. It is
not sufficient, he declares, to prove that something is, one must also prove
that it had to be—and since nothing had to be, nothing is certain and
anything goes.
The technique of undercutting man’s mind consists in palming off the man-made
as if it were the metaphysically given, then ascribing to nature the concepts
that refer only to men’s lack of knowledge, such as “chance” or “contingency,”
then reversing the two elements of the package-deal. From the assertion: “Man
is unpredictable, therefore nature is unpredictable,” the argument goes to:
“Nature possesses volition, man does not—nature is free, man is ruled by
unknowable forces—nature is not to be conquered, man is.”