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General Philosophy of Science > Laws of Nature > Laws of Nature, Miscellaneous > History: Laws of Nature
History: Laws of Nature
Edited by Markus Schrenk (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
Assistant editor: Daian Bica (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
About this topic
| Summary | The concept of laws of nature, as we know it today, emerged as late as in early modern philosophy. The ancient Greeks did not apply the concept of a law to the inanimate word at all and the scholastic thinkers, for example Thomas Aquinas, related the concept of lex naturale only to beings capable of understanding. And when it finally developed in early modern times it was tied to theological ideas, referring to the “lawful” creator, regarded as the governor of nature which has control over the creation via enforced laws. Recent historical studies underline, too, that the early modern concept of law had also taken amalgamated experimental and mathematical meanings besides the standard theological understanding. One side of the literature on the history of, for example, the use of the concept law within the development of classical mechanics depicts the early theological, metaphysical, mathematical, and experimental origins in neutral, descriptive terms. Other involved authors take especially the historical relation to theology as an indication that the concept of laws of nature is an old artifact of past centuries and, thus, unfit for understanding the scientific practice nowadays (see also the entry on Anti-Realism about Laws). |
| Key works | For historical studies, see Stolleis & Daston 2008, Harrison 2019, Brading & Stan 2023. For anti-realist implications of the history of laws of nature, see Van Van Fraassen 1989, Giere 1999. For positive assessment of the history of laws, see Massimi 2022. |
| Introductions | Stolleis & Daston 2008, Jaag & Schrenk 2020, ch.1.5, Ott & Patton 2018, Schrenk 2017 |
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Related
Siblings
- Humeanism and Nonhumeanism about Laws (296)
- Law Statements (74)
- Nomological Necessity (188)
- Laws of Nature, Misc (521)
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- Why the Book of Nature is Written in the Language of Mathematics.Dustin Lazarovici - 2024 - In Angelo Bassi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka & Nino Zanghi, Physics and the Nature of Reality: Essays in Memory of Detlef Dürr. Springer. pp. 369-381.The essay traces the following idea from the presocratic philosopher Heraclitus, to the Pythagoreans, to Newton’s Principia: Laws of nature are laws of proportion for matter in motion. Proportions are expressed by numbers or, as the essay proposes, even identical to real numbers. It is argued that this view is still relevant to modern physics and helps us understand why physical laws are mathematical.$161.49 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation
Bookmark - Relativity Theory as a Theory of Principles: A Reading of Cassirer’s Zur Einstein’schen Relativitätstheorie.Marco Giovanelli - 2023 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 13 (2):261-296.In his Zur Einstein’schen Relativitätstheorie, Ernst Cassirer presents relativity theory as the last manifestation of the tradition of the “physics of principles” that, starting from the nineteenth century, has progressively prevailed over that of the “physics of models.” In particular, according to Cassirer, the relativity principle plays a role similar to the energy principle in previous physics. In this article, I argue that this comparison represents the core of Cassirer’s neo-Kantian interpretation of relativity. Cassirer pointed out that before and after (...)
- Origin’s Chapter V: How “Random” Is Evolutionary Change?Sander Gliboff - 2023 - In Maria Elice Brzezinski Prestes, Understanding Evolution in Darwin's “Origin”: The Emerging Context of Evolutionary Thinking. Springer. pp. 261-273.Darwin’s fifth chapter, “The Laws of Variation,” may stand in the shadow of the first four that climax with his presentation of “Natural Selection,” but its importance should not be underestimated. It deals with philosophical and methodological issues in the study of variation that would be hotly debated for decades after the publication of the book, many of which are still unsettled today. As the chapter title suggests, Darwin felt that a proper scientific study of variation had to discover the (...)
- Newton's “law-first” epistemology and “matter-first” metaphysics.Caleb Hazelwood - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 101 (C):40-47.Much has been written on Newton’s concept of matter, as well as Newton’s laws. Meanwhile, the metaphysical and epistemological relationships between these two principal features of Newtonian philosophy are relatively unexplored. Among the existing accounts of the relationship between bodies and laws, two are especially compelling: the “law-constitutive” approach from Katherine Brading and the “formal-cause” approach from Zvi Biener and Eric Schliesser. Both accounts argue that Newton’s bodies are (at least partially) metaphysically dependent on the laws. That is, according to (...)
- Kant's regulative essentialism and the unknowability of real essences.Hoffer Noam - 2023 - European Journal of Philosophy 31 (4):887-901.In his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, Kant distinguishes between logical and real essences. While the former is related to concepts and is knowable, the latter is related to things and is unknowable. In this paper, I argue that the unknowability is explained by the modal characteristic of real essences as a necessitating ground on which a priori knowledge is impossible. I also show how this claim is related to the unknowable necessity of particular laws of nature. Since laws of (...)
- Reconstructing Newton’s Conception of the Laws of Nature.Cristian Soto - 2023 - Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 23:309-330.We routinely speak of Newton’s laws in classical mechanics without really knowing how Newton understood such laws. This article clarifies some of the ontological, epistemological, and theological presuppositions underpinning his conception of the laws of nature. After introducing the Cartesian background (2), we examine the Newtonian view of laws of nature in three respects, namely: the character of laws of nature in the context of the rules for natural philosophy (3); the emanative conception of space and time in _De Gravitatione_; (...)
- The Necessity of Empirical Laws of Nature through the Lens of Kant’s Dialectic.Lorenzo Spagnesi - 2023 - Kantian Review 28 (3):413-428.This article analyses a sceptical challenge resulting from metaphysical approaches to the problem of the necessity of empirical laws of nature in Kant’s critical philosophy (what I shall call ‘essentialist’ readings). I argue that this challenge may jeopardize the purpose of empirical enquiry (and therefore the plausibility of essentialist readings), but that Kant has internal resources to address it in the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. I show that reading this problem through the lens of the Dialectic allows (...)
- Nur um den Preis eines Selbstwiderspruchs: Kants nomologische Fassung des Kausalprinzips.Stephan Zimmermann - 2023 - Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 71 (6):833-856.In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant formulates the principle of causality both nomologically and non-nomologically. One formulation says that everything happens in accordance with laws, the other that everything that happens has a cause. Geert Keil has claimed that Kant actually holds the nomological version, but that he omits or neglects to justify it. I will argue that Keil is right with his claim, but that he wrongly accuses Kant of a lack of justification. For Kant holds something that (...)
- The Metaphysics of Laws of Nature: The Rules of the Game.Walter Ott - 2022 - Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.It can seem obvious that we live in a world governed by laws of nature, yet it was not until the seventeenth century that the concept of a law came to the fore. Ever since, it has been attended by controversy: what does it mean to say that Boyle's law governs the expansion of a gas, or that the planets obey the law of gravity? Laws are rules that permit calculations and predictions. What does the universe have to be like, (...)
- Descartes on Necessity and the Laws of Nature.Nathan Rockwood - 2022 - Journal of Analytic Theology 10:277-292.This paper is on Descartes’ account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics depends on God’s will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being nomologically or physically necessary because of the laws of (...)
- Leibniz and Kant on Empirical Miracles: Rationalism, Freedom, and the Laws.Andrew Chignell - 2021 - In Brandon C. Look,
Leibniz and Kant
. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 320-354.Leibniz and Kant were heirs of a biblical theistic tradition which viewed miraculous activity in the world as both possible and actual. But both were also deep explanatory rationalists about the natural world: more committed than your average philosophical theologian to its thoroughgoing intelligibility. These dual sympathies—supernaturalist religion and empirical rationalism—generate a powerful tension across both philosophers’ systems, one that is most palpable in their accounts of empirical miracles—that is, events in nature that violate one or more of the natural (...)
- Kant, causation and laws of nature.James Hutton - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 86 (C):93-102.In the Second Analogy, Kant argues that every event has a cause. It remains disputed what this conclusion amounts to. Does Kant argue only for the Weak Causal Principle that every event has some cause, or for the Strong Causal Principle that every event is produced according to a universal causal law? Existing interpretations have assumed that, by Kant’s lights, there is a substantive difference between the two. I argue that this is false. Kant holds that the concept of cause (...)
- Evidence and explanation in Kant's doctrine of laws.Marius Stan - 2021 - Studi Kantiani 34:141-49.I emphasize two merits of Eric Watkins’ account in "Kant on Laws": the strong evidential support it has, and the central place it gives to Kant’s laws of mechanics. Then, I raise two questions for further research. 1. What kind of evidential reasoning confirms a Kantian law? 2. Do natures explain Kantian laws? If so, how?
- From metaphysical principles to dynamical laws.Marius Stan - 2021 - In David Marshall Miller & Dana Jalobeanu, The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 387-405.My thesis in this paper is: the modern concept of laws of motion—qua dynamical laws—emerges in 18th-century mechanics. The driving factor for it was the need to extend mechanics beyond the centroid theories of the late-1600s. The enabling result behind it was the rise of differential equations. -/- In consequence, by the mid-1700s we see a deep shift in the form and status of laws of motion. The shift is among the critical inflection points where early modern mechanics turns into (...)
- (1 other version)Kant on Laws: by Eric Watkins, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 310, £75.00 (hb), ISBN 978-1-107-16391-1.Brigitte Falkenburg - 2020 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (1):186-188.There are many books on Kant's accounts of the laws of nature and of the moral law, but there is almost no literature that covers both topics in order to clarify their common grounds and their diff...
- Laws of God or laws of nature?: natural order in the early modern period.Peter Harrison - 2019 - In Peter Harrison & Jon H. Roberts, Science Without God?: Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
- The mind of God and the works of nature: laws and powers in naturalism, platonism, and classical theism.James Orr - 2019 - Leuven: Peeters.Historians of science have long considered the very idea of a law-governed universe to be the relic of a bygone intellectual culture that took it largely for granted that a divine lawmaker existed. Similarly, many philosophers of science today insist that the notion of a law of nature is fraught with implausibly theological assumptions, preferring instead to treat them as theoretical axioms in an optimal description of nature's regularities, or else as robust patterns of causal connections or causal powers whose (...)
- Principles of Motion and the Absence of Laws of Nature in Hobbes’s Natural Philosophy.Stathis Psillos & Eirini Goudarouli - 2019 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1):93-119.Thomas Hobbes based his natural philosophy on definitions and general principles of matter in motion, which he refrained from calling “laws of nature.” Across the channel, René Descartes had presented his own account of matter in motion in such a way that laws of nature play a central causal-explanatory role. Despite some notable differences in the two systems of natural philosophy, the content of the three Cartesian laws of nature is shared by Hobbesian principles of motion. Why is it the (...)
- Laws of nature and the divine order of things : Descartes and Newton on truth in natural philosophy.Mary Domski - 2018 - In Walter R. Ott & Lydia Patton, Laws of Nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- The problem of grounding natural modality in Kant's account of empirical laws of nature.Kristina Engelhard - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 71:24-34.
- Early modern roots of the philosophical concept of a law of nature.Helen Hattab - 2018 - In Walter R. Ott & Lydia Patton, Laws of Nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Kausalität und Naturgesetze bei Hume und Kant.Wiebke Henning - 2018 - Dissertation, Ruhr-Universität BochumIn der Dissertation "Kausalität und Naturgesetze bei Hume und Kant" wird die These vertreten, dass sich in der Werken Kants vielfältige Antworten auf den Skeptizismus David Humes finden lassen. Kants Position zu Naturgesetzen und Kausalität wird insbesondere anhand seiner Theorien zu besonderen Naturgesetzen in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, den Prolegomena, den Metaphysischen Anfangsgründen der Naturwissenschaft und in der Kritik der Urteilskraft untersucht. Geleitet wird die Untersuchung von der Frage, wie empirische Gesetze in Kants Philosophie gerechtfertigt werden. In diesem Zusammenhang (...)
- Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach , Kant and the Laws of Nature Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017 Pp. xii+ 288 ISBN 9781107120983 £64.99. [REVIEW]Michael Bennett McNulty - 2018 - Kantian Review 23 (2):338-343.
- “Un dessein marqué dans la fabrique du monde”: Teleology in Émilie du Ch'telet’s Institutions de physique. „Un dessein marqué dans la fabrique du monde“: Die Teleologie in den Institutions de physique von Émilie du Ch'telet.Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet - 2018 - Studia Leibnitiana 50 (1):57.This paper analyzes the teleological perspective articulated by Émilie du Châtelet in her Institutions de physique (1740). I argue for the decisive influence of Christian Wolff on the metaphysical conception advanced by du Châtelet in the first chapters of this work aimed at providing a consistent metaphysical foundation to the new physics. I further claim that the principle of sufficient reason plays a crucial role in this endeavor. I then show that du Châtelet initiates a significant shift in teleology: she (...)
- “Nature Doth Not Work by Election”: John Wallis, Robert Grosseteste, and the Mathematical Laws of Nature.Adam D. Richter - 2018 - Journal of Early Modern Studies 7 (1):47-72.Though he is known primarily for his mathematics, John Wallis was also a prominent natural philosopher and experimentalist. Like many experimental philosophers, including his colleagues in the Royal Society, Wallis sought to identify the mathematical laws that govern natural phenomena. However, I argue that Wallis’s particular understanding of the laws of nature was informed by his reading of a thirteenth–century optical treatise by Robert Grosseteste, De lineis, angulis et figuris, which expresses the principle that “Nature doth not work by Election.” (...)
- Renaissance Idea of Natural Law.Maarten Van Dyck - 2018 - Encylopedia of Renaissance Philosophy.The introduction of laws of nature is often seen as one of the hallmarks of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. The new sciences are thought to have introduced the revolutionary idea that explanations of natural phenomena have to be grounded in exceptionless regularities of universal scope, i. e. laws of nature. The use of legal terminology to talk about natural regularities has a longer history, though. This article traces these earlier uses.
- Kant’s Response to Hume in the Second Analogy: A Critique of Gerd Buchdahl’s and Michael Friedman’s Accounts.Saniye Vatansever - 2018 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 8 (2):310-346.This article presents a critical analysis of two influential readings of Kant’s Second Analogy, namely, Gerd Buchdahl’s “modest reading” and Michael Friedman’s “strong reading.” After pointing out the textual and philosophical problems with each, I advance an alternative reading of the Second Analogy argument. On my reading, the Second Analogy argument proves the existence of necessary and strictly universal causal laws. This, however, does not guarantee that Kant has a solution for the problem of induction. After I explain why the (...)
- Kant and the Laws of Nature ed. by Michela Massimi, Angela Breitenbach.Reed Winegar - 2018 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (2):377-378.This is a welcome collection of essays addressing Kant’s treatment of natural laws. Kant’s best-known discussion of natural laws is the Critique of Pure Reason’s second analogy, which argues that all alterations take place according to causal laws. But Kant’s overall treatment of natural laws extends far beyond the second analogy. For instance, the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science aims to derive specific laws of motion. The appendix to the Critique of Pure Reason’s transcendental dialectic and the introductions to the (...)
- The Certainty, Modality, and Grounding of Newton’s Laws.Zvi Biener & Eric Schliesser - 2017 - The Monist 100 (3):311-325.Newton began his Principia with three Axiomata sive Leges Motus. We offer an interpretation of Newton’s dual label and investigate two tensions inherent in his account of laws. The first arises from the juxtaposition of Newton’s confidence in the certainty of his laws and his commitment to their variability and contingency. The second arises because Newton ascribes fundamental status both to the laws and to the bodies and forces they govern. We argue the first is resolvable, but the second is (...)
- Pieter van Musschenbroek on laws of nature.Steffen Ducheyne & Pieter Present - 2017 - British Journal for the History of Science 50 (4):637-656.In this article, we discuss the development of the concept of a ‘law’ (of nature) in the work of the Dutch natural philosopher and experimenter Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692–1761). Since Van Musschenbroek is commonly described as one of the first ‘Newtonians’ on the Continent in the secondary literature, we focus more specifically on its relation to Newton’s views on this issue. Although he was certainly indebted to Newton for his thinking on laws (of nature), Van Musschenbroek’s views can be seen (...)
- ‘Natures’ and ‘Laws’: The making of the concept of law of nature – Robert Grosseteste (c. 1168–1253) and Roger Bacon.Yael Kedar & Giora Hon - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 61:21-31.
- Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292) and his System of Laws of Nature: Classification, Hierarchy and Significance.Yael Kedar & Giora Hon - 2017 - Perspectives on Science 25 (6):719-745.The idea that nature is governed by laws and that the goal of science is to discover and formulate these laws, rose to prominence during the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. It was manifestly held by the most significant actors of that revolution such as Galileo, Descartes, Kepler, Boyle, and Newton. But this idea was not new. In fact, it made an appearance in the Middle Ages, and it is likely to have emerged already in Antiquity.1In this paper we (...)
- Metaphysics of the principle of least action.Vladislav Terekhovich - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 62:189-201.Despite the importance of the variational principles of physics, there have been relatively few attempts to consider them for a realistic framework. In addition to the old teleological question, this paper continues the recent discussion regarding the modal involvement of the principle of least action and its relations with the Humean view of the laws of nature. The reality of possible paths in the principle of least action is examined from the perspectives of the contemporary metaphysics of modality and Leibniz's (...)
- Fresnel's laws, ceteris paribus.Aaron Sidney Wright - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 64:38-52.This article is about structural realism, historical continuity, laws of nature, and \emph{ceteris paribus} clauses. Fresnel's Laws of optics support Structural Realism because they are a scientific structure that has survived theory change. However, the history of Fresnel's Laws which has been depicted in debates over realism since the 1980s is badly distorted. Specifically, claims that J.~C. Maxwell or his followers believed in an ontologically-subsistent electromagnetic field, and gave up the aether, before Einstein's \emph{annus mirabilis} in 1905 are indefensible. Related (...)
- Rethinking Order: After the Laws of Nature.Nancy Cartwright & Keith Ward (eds.) - 2016 - New York: Bloomsbury.This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse, piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined. In each chapter expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws of nature, and explore the diverse (...)
- Laws of nature and the mathematics of motion.Daniel Garber - 2016 - In Geoffrey Gorham, The Language of Nature: Reassessing the Mathematization of Natural Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Essays concerning Hume's Natural Philosophy.Matias Slavov - 2016 - Dissertation, University of JyväskyläThe subject of this essay-based dissertation is Hume’s natural philosophy. The dissertation consists of four separate essays and an introduction. These essays do not only treat Hume’s views on the topic of natural philosophy, but his views are placed into a broader context of history of philosophy and science, physics in particular. The introductory section outlines the historical context, shows how the individual essays are connected, expounds what kind of research methodology has been used, and encapsulates the research contributions of (...)
- Kant on causal laws and powers.Tobias Henschen - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 48:20-29.
- Preface: Kant and the Lawfulness of Nature.Michela Massimi - 2014 - Kant Studien 105 (4):469-470.:This paper traces the early reflections of the pre-Critical Kant on laws of nature back to Newton’s governing conception of laws. Three problems with the Newtonian conception are identified. I argue that in the attempt to provide a solution to them, in 1763 Kant came to forge a novel governing conception of laws. Key to Kant’s novel view are the notions of ground and its determinations. The role of these two notions in delivering the nomological necessity, explanatory power, and unity (...)
- Prescribing laws to nature. Part I. Newton, the pre-Critical Kant, and three problems about the lawfulness of nature.Michela Massimi - 2014 - Kant Studien 105 (4):491-508.Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 4 Seiten: 491-508.
- Three principles of unity in Newton.Katherine Brading - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3):408-415.
- Newton’s “satis est”: A new explanatory role for laws.Lina Jansson - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):553-562.In this paper I argue that Newton’s stance on explanation in physics was enabled by his overall methodology and that it neither committed him to embrace action at a distance nor to set aside philosophical and metaphysical questions. Rather his methodology allowed him to embrace a non-causal, yet non-inferior, kind of explanation. I suggest that Newton holds that the theory developed in the Principia provides a genuine explanation, namely a law-based one, but that we also lack something explanatory, namely a (...)
- Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy, by Walter Ott. [REVIEW]Joseph K. Cosgrove - 2012 - International Philosophical Quarterly 52 (3):379-381.
- Mill and Lewis on laws, experimentation, and systematization.Jessica Pfeifer - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (1):172-181.Mill appears to be committed to two incompatible accounts of laws. While he seems to defend a Humean account of laws similar to Ramsey’s and Lewis’s, he also appears to rely on modal notions to distinguish lawful relations from accidental regularities. This paper will show that Mill’s two accounts of laws are in fact equivalent. This equivalence results from a proper understanding of the necessity involved in laws and a proper understanding of systematization. This equivalence reveals the true source of (...)
- Leibniz on the laws of nature and the best deductive system.Joshua L. Watson - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (4):577-584.Many philosophers who do not analyze laws of nature as the axioms and theorems of the best deductive systems nevertheless believe that membership in those systems is evidence for being a law. This raises the question, “If the best systems analysis fails, what explains the fact that being a member of the best systems is evidence for being a law?” In this essay I answer this question on behalf of Leibniz. I argue that although Leibniz’s philosophy of laws is inconsistent (...)
- Lorraine Daston;, Michael Stolleis . Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy. xii + 338 pp., index. Farnham, Surrey/Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2008. $114.95. [REVIEW]Daniel Garber - 2010 - Isis 101 (4):872-873.
- Vanishing Matter and the Laws of Motion: Descartes and Beyond.Dana Jalobeanu & Peter R. Anstey (eds.) - 2010 - New York: Routledge.This volume explores the themes of vanishing matter, matter and the laws of nature, the qualities of matter, and the diversity of the debates about matter in the early modern period. Chapters are unified by a number of interlocking themes which together enable some of the broader contours of the philosophy of matter to be charted in new ways. Part I concerns Cartesian Matter; Part II covers Matter, Mechanism and Medicine; Part III covers Matter and the Laws of Motion; and (...)
- Mauro Dorato * The Software of the Universe: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of the Laws of Nature. [REVIEW]Markus Schrenk - 2010 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (E-Version) 62 (1):225-232.This is a review of Mauro Dorato's book "The Software of the Universe: An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of the Laws of Nature ".
- Causation & laws of nature in early modern philosophy (review).Eric Stencil - 2010 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 48 (4):524-526.In Causation & Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy, Walter Ott offers us a fascinating account of the development of theories of causation and laws of nature in the early modern period. The central theme of the book traces the development of two approaches to causation in the period: the “top-down analysis” and the “bottom-up analysis.” According to the former approach, the laws of nature are not “fixed by the natures of the objects they govern.” Rather, the content of (...)
- Contingent Laws of Nature in Émile Boutroux.Michael Heidelberger - 2009 - In Michael Heidelberger & Gregor Schiemann, The Significance of the Hypothetical in Natural Science. De Gruyter. pp. 99-144.In 1874, the French philosopher Émile Boutroux wrote a dissertationon the contingency of the laws of nature that highly influenced academic philosophy during the French Third Republic and led to a more hypothetical view of the natural sciences and mathematics. Boutroux took over the concept of contingency from the neo-Kantian philosopher Eduard Zeller who had insisted against Hegel on the role of contingency in history, and carried it over to nature. From this he tried to show that the sciences are (...)$132.79 new (collection) View on Amazon.comRemove from this list Direct downloadExport citation Bookmark
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