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Laws of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Fred I. Dretske
Fred I. Dretske*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Abstract

It is a traditional empiricist doctrine that natural laws are universal truths. In order to overcome the obvious difficulties with this equation most empiricists qualify it by proposing to equate laws with universal truths that play a certain role, or have a certain function, within the larger scientific enterprise. This view is examined in detail and rejected; it fails to account for a variety of features that laws are acknowledged to have. An alternative view is advanced in which laws are expressed by singular statements of fact describing the relationship between universal properties and magnitudes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 248 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

For their helpful comments my thanks to colleagues at Wisconsin and a number of other universities where I read earlier versions of this paper. I wish, especially, to thank Zane Parks, Robert Causey, Martin Perlmutter, Norman Gillespie, and Richard Aquilla for their critical suggestions, but they should not be blamed for the way I garbled them.

References

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