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3 ideas
18613 | Artifacts can be natural kinds, when they are the object of historical enquiry [Machery] |
Full Idea: Some artifacts are the objects of inquiry in the social sciences ...such as prehistoric tools ...and hence, artifacts are bona fide natural kinds. | |
From: Edouard Machery (Doing Without Concepts [2009], 8.2.1) | |
A reaction: Presumably if a bird's nest can be a natural kind, then so can a flint axe, but then so can a mobile phone, for an urban anthropologist. 'Natural' is, to put it mildly, a tricky word. |
14985 | 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. |
14987 | 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) |