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Single Idea 15862
[filed under theme 26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 2. Types of Laws
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Full Idea
Boyle's Law generalises a mass of messy data culled from an apparatus; Snell's Law is an experimentally derived law deducible from theory; Newton's First Law derives from concepts and thought experiments; Mendel's Law used an experimental procedure.
Clarification
Snell's Law concerns the refraction of light
Gist of Idea
Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures
Source
Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1)
Book Ref
Harré,Rom: 'Laws of Nature' [Duckworth 1993], p.10
A Reaction
Nice examples, especially since Boyle's and Newton's laws are divided by a huge gulf, and arrived at about the same time. On p.35 Harré says these come down to two: abstraction from experiment, and derivation from deep assumptions.
The
27 ideas
from 'Laws of Nature'
15869
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Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature
[Harré]
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15868
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Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out
[Harré]
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15860
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We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws
[Harré]
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15867
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Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature
[Harré]
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15864
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Classification is just as important as laws in natural science
[Harré]
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15865
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Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces
[Harré]
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15862
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Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures
[Harré]
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15870
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Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three?
[Harré]
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15871
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Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities?
[Harré]
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15872
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Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local?
[Harré]
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15875
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In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them
[Harré]
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15876
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Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties?
[Harré]
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15874
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Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them
[Harré]
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15879
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The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair
[Harré]
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15881
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We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions
[Harré]
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15882
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Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them
[Harré]
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15878
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Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range
[Harré]
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15880
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In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered
[Harré]
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15885
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The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism
[Harré]
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15884
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Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged
[Harré]
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15886
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Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds
[Harré]
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15889
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It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected
[Harré]
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15890
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Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black'
[Harré]
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15887
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'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour
[Harré]
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15891
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Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions
[Harré]
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15888
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The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science
[Harré]
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15892
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Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms
[Harré]
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