A curve of possibilities................

     If scientific laws are not absolutely precise, then scientific terminology has to be understood in a new way.  Words like "cause" and "effect,"  "certainty" and "chance,"  even "hard" and soft" cannot be understood as naming fixed and discrete entities or properties;  they have to be understood as naming points on a curve of possibilities, as guesses or predictions rather than conclusions.  Otherwise, scientists are in danger of reifying their concepts - of imputing an unvarying essence to phenomena that are in a continual state of flux.  Peirce was the first scientist to perceive all the implications of this problem...

Louis Menand,  The Metaphysical Club:  A Story of Ideas in America