Laws of NatureWalter R. Ott, Lydia Patton What is the origin of the concept of a law of nature? How much does it owe to theology and metaphysics? To what extent do the laws of nature permit contingency? Are there exceptions to the laws of nature? Is it possible to give a reductive analysis of lawhood, or is it a primitive? Twelve brand-new essays by an international team of leading philosophers take up these and other central questions on the laws of nature, whilst also examining some of the most important intuitions and assumptions that have guided the debate over laws of nature since the concept's invention in the seventeenth century. Laws of Nature spans the history of philosophy and of science, contemporary metaphysics, and contemporary philosophy of science. |
Contents
Intuitions and Assumptions in the Debate over Laws of Nature | 1 |
Early Modern Roots of the Philosophical Concept of a Law of Nature | 18 |
Laws of Nature and the Divine Order of Things Descartes and Newton on Truth in Natural Philosophy | 42 |
Leges sive natura Bacon Spinoza and a Forgotten Concept of Law | 62 |
Laws and Powers in the Frame of Nature | 80 |
Laws and Ideal Unity | 108 |
Becoming Humean | 122 |
A Perspectivalist Better Best System Account of Lawhood | 139 |
Laws An InvarianceBased Account | 158 |
How the Explanations of Natural Laws Make Some Reducible Physical Properties Natural and Explanatorily Powerful | 181 |
Laws and Their Exceptions | 205 |
Are Laws of Nature Consistent with Contingency? | 221 |
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Common terms and phrases
according account of laws Aquinas argue argument Aristotelian Bacon Basso bodies Cartesian Cartwright causal causes center of mass ceteris paribus claims cognition concept conservation context contingency Coulomb's law counterfactual Descartes 1984b Descartes's dispositions distinction divine empirical laws enters epistemic example explain explanatory power facts force fundamental God's gravity ground happens Hence Humean idea immutability independent infinite mode initial conditions invariance invariance-based account Kant Kant's kind knowledge lawhood laws of motion laws of nature Leibniz Lewis Lewis's Lewisian Malebranche mathematical matter metaphysical modal move natura naturans natural philosophy natural properties Newton nomic necessity objects ontology particular laws perspectival perspectivalist phenomena physical possible worlds Principia principles priori laws quantity question reason reducible property regularities relations role rules scientific practice seesaw semantics sense Spinoza standards of simplicity substance systematic unity theory things tipping law true truth understanding universal