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26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature

[rejection of the very idea that there are 'laws' of nature]

24 ideas
The more precise the observations, the less reliable appear to be the laws of nature [Peirce]
     Full Idea: Try to verify any law of nature, and you will find that the more precise your observations, the more certain they will be to show irregular departures from the law.
     From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Doctrine of Necessity Examined [1892], p.331)
     A reaction: This nicely encapsulates modern doubts about whether the so-called 'laws' of nature actually capture what is going on in the real world.
Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The alleged 'laws of nature' are formulas for power relationships…
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Fragments from 1885-1886 [1886], 34[247])
     A reaction: Love it. This is precisely the powers ontology of modern philosophy of science. His Will to Power is not often recognised as closely related to this view.
Modern man wants laws of nature in order to submit to them [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: In present times, man wishes to understand the lawfulness of nature in order to submit to it.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human [1878], 111)
     A reaction: They don't make philosophers like Nietzsche any more (or at least, in the analytic tradition I am following!). No one who is trying to give an analysis of the laws of nature has any interest in why we are so keen to find them. Stoics 'live by nature'.
The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré]
     Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose.
     From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2
     A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts.
The laws of motion and gravitation are just parts of the definition of a kind of matter [Russell]
     Full Idea: For us, as pure mathematicians, the laws of motion and the law of gravitation are not properly laws at all, but parts of the definition of a certain kind of matter.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §459)
     A reaction: The 'certain kind of matter' is that which has 'mass'. Since these are paradigm cases of supposed laws, this is the beginning of the end for real laws of nature, and good riddance say I. See Mumford on this.
We can't know that our laws are exceptionless, or even that there are any laws [Russell]
     Full Idea: If some law which has no exceptions applies to a case, we can never be sure that we have discovered that law and not one to which there are exceptions; also the reign of law would seem to be itself only probable.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 6)
     A reaction: None of this can be denied. In modern physics, several supposed laws have come up for question. Is the proton stable? Are the gravitational constant or the speed of light necessarily fixed? Russell is doing epistemology. How do we conceive the laws?
Laws of nature are an aspect of the phenomena, and are just our mode of description [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: The laws of nature are not outside phenomena. They are part of language and of our way of describing things; you cannot discuss them apart from their physical manifestation.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V C)
     A reaction: I suppose this amounts to a Humean regularity theory - that the descriptions pick out patterns in the manifestations. I like the initial claim that they are not external to phenomena.
The idea of laws of nature arose in the Middle Ages [Hall,AR, by Ellis]
     Full Idea: According to A.R. Hall, the idea that nature is governed by laws does not appear to have existed in the ancient Greek, Roman or Far Eastern traditions of science, but arose from religious, philosophical and legal ideas in medieval Europe.
     From: report of A.R. Hall (The Scientific Revolution 1500-1800 [1954]) by Brian Ellis - The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism Ch.5
     A reaction: This is a very illuminating point, which gives good circumstantial support for questioning the existence of external laws which are imposed on a passive nature. Modern essentialism suggest the 'laws' are the intrinsic results of properties.
We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: There is a case for calling a generalisation a law when its only confirmation is the multiplication of instances, if they don't conflict with other criteria. In fact any supported generalisation could count as a law if there is no counter-evidence.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern doubts about laws of nature, fully articulated in Mumford 2004. It seems to me inescapable that laws drop out if our ontology is based on powerful particulars. They are just patterns of outcome.
The world is just a vast mosaic of little matters of local particular fact [Lewis]
     Full Idea: The world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another.
     From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986])
     A reaction: Basing laws on this picture is what Lewis calls 'Humean Supervenience'.
To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N]
     Full Idea: To get from a detailed factual knowledge of a situation to an equation, we must prepare the description of the situation to meet the mathematical needs of the theory.
     From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro)
     A reaction: She is clearly on to something here, as Galileo is blatantly wrong in his claim that the book of nature is written in mathematics. Mathematics is the best we can manage in getting a grip on the chaos.
There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N]
     Full Idea: Where theories intersect, laws are usually hard to come by.
     From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.3)
     A reaction: There are attempts at so-called 'bridge laws', to get from complex theories to simple ones, but her point is well made about theories on the same 'level'.
Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N]
     Full Idea: For explanation simple laws must have the same form when they act together as when they act singly. ..But then what the law states cannot literally be true, for the consequences that occur if it acts alone are not what occurs when they act in combination.
     From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.6)
     A reaction: This is Cartwright's basic thesis. Her point is that the laws 'lie', because they claim to predict a particular outcome which never ever actually occurs. She says we could know all the laws, and still not be able to explain anything.
The laws of nature depend on the powers, not the other way round [Molnar]
     Full Idea: What powers there are does not depend on what laws there are, but vice versa, what laws obtain in the world is a function of what powers are to be found in that world.
     From: George Molnar (Powers [1998], 1.4.5)
     A reaction: This old idea may well be the most important realisation of modern times. I take the 'law' view to be based on a religious view of the world (see Idea 5470). There is still room to believe in a divine creator of the bewildering underlying powers.
Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver]
     Full Idea: The traditional notion of a law of nature has few, if any, applications in neurobiology or molecular biology.
     From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3.2)
     A reaction: This is a simple and self-evident fact, and bad news for anyone who want to build their entire ontology around laws of nature. I take such a notion to be fairly empty, except as a convenient heuristic device.
You only need laws if you (erroneously) think the world is otherwise inert [Mumford]
     Full Idea: Laws are a solution to a problem that was misconceived. Only if you think that the world would be otherwise inactive or inanimate, do you have the need to add laws to your ontology.
     From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.5)
     A reaction: This is a bold and extreme view - and I agree with it. I consider laws to be quite a useful concept when discussing nature, but they are not part of the ontology, and they don't do any work. They are metaphysically hopeless.
There are no laws of nature in Aristotle; they became standard with Descartes and Newton [Mumford]
     Full Idea: Laws do not appear in Aristotle's metaphysics, and it wasn't until Descartes and Newton that laws entered the intellectual mainstream.
     From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.5)
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 5470.
The Central Dilemma is how to explain an internal or external view of laws which govern [Mumford]
     Full Idea: The Central Dilemma about laws of nature is that, if they have some governing role, then they must be internal or external to the things governed, and it is hard to give a plausible account of either view.
     From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 09.2)
     A reaction: This dilemma is the basis of Mumford's total rejection of 'laws of nature'. I think I agree.
The notion of law doesn't seem to enhance physical theories [Sider]
     Full Idea: Adding the notion of law to physical theory doesn't seem to enhance its explanatory power.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.4)
     A reaction: I agree with his scepticism about laws, although Sider offers it as part of his scepticism about modal facts being included in explanations of actuality. Personally I like dispositions, but not laws. See the ideas of Stephen Mumford.
Many of the key theories of modern physics do not appear to be 'laws' [Sider]
     Full Idea: That spacetime is 4D Lorentzian manifold, that the universe began with a singularity, and in a state of low entropy, are all central to physics, but it is a stretch to call them 'laws'. ...It has been argued that there are no laws of biology.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.1)
There are apparently no scientific laws concerning biological species [Koslicki]
     Full Idea: It has been observed that there are apparently no scientific laws concerning biological species.
     From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 8.4.1)
     A reaction: The central concept of biology I take to be a 'mechanism'. and I suspect that this view of science is actually applicable in physics and chemistry, with so-called 'laws' being a merely superficial description of what is going on.
A 'law of nature' is just a regularity, not some entity that causes the regularity [Leuridan]
     Full Idea: By 'law of nature' or 'natural law' I mean a generalization describing a regularity, not some metaphysical entity that produces or is responsible for that regularity.
     From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §1 n1)
     A reaction: I take the second version to be a relic of a religious world view, and having no place in a naturalistic metaphysic. The regularity view is then the only player in the field, and the question is, can we do more? Can't we explain regularities?
Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum]
     Full Idea: What we take to be laws are just descriptions of how the powers behave and affect each other.
     From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3c)
     A reaction: This is precisely my view, which I first gleaned in its boldest from from Mumford 2004. I idea that ontology does not contain any 'laws of nature' I find wonderfully liberating. Weak emergence is just epistemic.
If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum]
     Full Idea: Physical laws are typically understood as equations, ...but then factors must vary simultaneously, since if one factor varied before the others, there would be a time when the two sides of the equation didn't equate (so Newton's 2nd Law would be false).
     From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5)
     A reaction: Nice. Presumably this thought seems to require action-at-a-distance, which no one could understand. Science oversimplifes the world. See Nancy Cartwright.