Beyond this, in their exercise of scientific initiative, as well as in the norms which guide the systematisation of scientific results, the contention will not be made good--at least not for the current phase of scientific knowledge. The claim, indeed, carries its own refutation. In making such a claim, both in rejecting the imputation of metaphysical postulates and in defending their position against their critics, the arguments put forward by the scientists run in causal terms. For the polemical purposes, where their antagonists are to be scientifically confuted, the defenders of the non-committal postulate of concomitance find that postulate inadequate. They are not content, in this precarious conjuncture, simply to attest a relation of idle quantitative concomitance (mathematical function) between the allegations of their critics, on the one hand, and their own controversial exposition of these matters on the other hand. They argue that they do not "make use of" such a postulate as "efficiency," whereas they claim to "make use of" the concept of function. But "make use of" is not a notion of functional variation but of causal efficiency in a somewhat gross and highly anthropomorphic form. The relation between their own thinking and the "principles" which they "apply" or the experiments and calculations which they "institute" in their "search" for facts, is not held to be of this non-committal kind. It will not be claimed that the shrewd insight and the bold initiative of a man eminent in the empirical sciences bear no more efficient or consequential a relation than that of mathematical function to the ingenious experiments by which he tests his hypotheses and extends the secure bounds of human knowledge. Least of all is the masterly experimentalist himself in a position to deny that his intelligence counts for something more efficient than idle concomitance in such a case. The connection between his premises, hypotheses, and experiments, on the one hand, and his theoretical results, on the other hand, is not felt to be of the nature of mathematical function. Consistently adhered to, the principle of "function" or concomitant variation precludes recourse to experiment, hypotheses or inquiry--indeed, it precludes "recourse" to anything whatever. Its notation does not comprise anything so anthropomorphic.