1993 | Laws of Nature |
1 | p.9 | 15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws |
1 | p.10 | 15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures |
1 | p.11 | 15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science |
1 | p.22 | 15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces |
1 | p.34 | 15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature |
1 | p.35 | 15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out |
1 | p.37 | 15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature |
2 | p.39 | 15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? |
2 | p.39 | 15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? |
2 | p.39 | 15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? |
2 | p.44 | 15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them |
2 | p.46 | 15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them |
2 | p.48 | 15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? |
3 | p.59 | 15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range |
3 | p.62 | 15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair |
3 | p.67 | 15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered |
3 | p.75 | 15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions |
3 | p.78 | 15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them |
4 | p.87 | 15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged |
4 | p.100 | 15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism |
5 | p.102 | 15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds |
5 | p.103 | 15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour |
5 | p.105 | 15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science |
5 | p.110 | 15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected |
5 | p.111 | 15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' |
5 | p.111 | 15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions |
5 | p.114 | 15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms |