display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why there have been regularities is an obscure question, for it is hard to see what would count as an answer. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard pessimism of the 20th century Humeans, but it strikes me as comparable to the pessimism about science found in Locke and Hume. Regularities are explained all the time by scientists, though the lowest level may be hopeless. |
| 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) |