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Full Idea
The laws of nature are not simple descriptions of what can be seen to happen. They are descriptions of abstractions and idealisations from a somewhat messy reality.
Gist of Idea
Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature
Source
Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1)
Book Ref
Harré,Rom: 'Laws of Nature' [Duckworth 1993], p.34
A Reaction
This view seems to have increasingly gripped modern philosophers, so that the old view of God decreeing a few simple equations to run the world has faded away.
| 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] |