Meaning of "until"

Question

I read the sentence below. What is the purpose of using "until" in the sentence? I can understand the whole sentence without "until."

But the more carefully nature has been studied, the more widely has order been found to prevail, while what seemed disorder has proved to be nothing but complexity, until, at present, no one is so foolish as to believe that anything happens by chance or that there are any real accidents, in the sense of events which have no cause.

Colin Fine · Answer

Without until, it would fall apart into two separate sentences.
The function of until is to tie these two together. The first half describes a long-drawn-out continuing process the more carefully nature has been studied, the more widely has order been found to prevail, and the second half describes the stage which that process has now reached.
There is no explicit mention of time in the first half, but our knowledge of the real world allows us to infer that the writer is talking about a long process. The writer is presenting "now" as an end-point, or at least an end-point so far.

Meaning of "until"

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