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Full Idea
We do not take laws to be recordings of what happens perchance or for the most part, but specifications of what happens necessarily
Gist of Idea
We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws
Source
Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1)
Book Ref
Harré,Rom: 'Laws of Nature' [Duckworth 1993], p.9
A Reaction
This sounds like a plausible necessary condition for a law, but it may not be a sufficient one. Are trivial necessities laws? On this view if there are no necessities then there are no laws.
| 17004 | Nothing can break the binding laws of eternity [Lucretius] |
| 16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
| 15820 | A 'law of nature' is just something which is physically necessary [Chisholm] |
| 15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
| 15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
| 15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
| 15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
| 14349 | If there are no finks or antidotes at the fundamental level, the laws can't be ceteris paribus [Burge, by Corry] |
| 3525 | Strict laws make causation logically necessary [Maslin] |
| 3527 | Strict laws allow no exceptions and are part of a closed system [Maslin] |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| 23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |