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Full Idea
Newton's First Law of Motion tells us what happens to a body which is not acted upon by a force. Yet it may be that the antecedent of the law is never instantiated. It may be that every body that there is, is acted upon by some force.
Gist of Idea
Newton's First Law refers to bodies not acted upon by a force, but there may be no such body
Source
David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 02.7)
Book Ref
Armstrong,D.M.: 'What is a Law of Nature?' [CUP 1985], p.21
| 4794 | We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman] |
| 17670 | Newton's First Law refers to bodies not acted upon by a force, but there may be no such body [Armstrong] |
| 12675 | Laws of nature are just descriptions of how things are disposed to behave [Ellis] |
| 15799 | Lawlike sentences are general attributions of disposition to all members of some class [Fetzer] |
| 4800 | Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations [Cohen,LJ, by Psillos] |
| 14339 | Without laws, how can a dispositionalist explain general behaviour within kinds? [Mumford] |
| 4793 | "All gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" is a true universal generalisation, but not a law [Psillos] |
| 14382 | Pragmatic laws allow prediction and explanation, to the extent that reality is stable [Leuridan] |