Pieter van Musschenbroek on laws of nature.

In this article, I discuss Petrus van Musschenbroek’s research on the strength of materials in relation to his methodological views. In the latter, van Musschenbroek emphasizes the importance of repeating and varying experiments. This is related to his views on the complexity of nature, which play a role in his views on mathematics, laws of nature, causes, and experimental method. In each case, the construction of an (experimental) history is presented as a first step in experimental philosophy, necessary to deal with the complexity of nature. The experimental research on the strength of materials can likewise be seen as aimed at the construction of an (experimental) history. His experimental practice takes the form of a systematic variation of parameters and the performance of an extensive series of experiments on different kinds of substances. In his experimental reports, van Musschenbroek repeatedly points to the utility of his experimental results. This utilitarian attitude is typical for the experimental history literature as discussed by Klein. Van Musschenbroek himself also presents his work as an experimental history. However, unlike the examples discussed by Klein, van Musschenbroek’s experimental history is characterized by a systematic experimental method. I argue that this method can be seen as an example of exploratory experimentation in Steinle’s sense. Finally, I suggest that with its emphasis on the nature and properties of specific materials, it could be fruitful to read van Musschenbroek’s experimental history in light of the emergence of engineering as a discipline in the eighteenth century.

The article discusses the shaping of the relation between natural and statutory law in philosophical, political, and legal concepts from Antiquity until the eighteenth century. Firstly, the author analyzes the views of sophists, Aristotle, stoics, Saint Augustine of Hippo, and Saint Thomas Aquinas in order to identify the main principles concerning the matter at hand based on their theories. His research permitted him to conclude that during the mentioned period the prevailing conviction was that statutory law (positive law) should not violate natural law (and sometimes simultaneously Gods law) because the latter was perceived as a higher legal order. Statutory law that conflicted with this higher law was usually considered invalid and, as such, did not incorporate an obligation of obedience. It was also usually considered unjust. For Christian thinkers God himself was the creator of the principles of justice; therefore that law which came directly from Him was put at the top of the legal structure. Natural law was seen as mirroring this law of God. In turn, a statutory law was supposed to reflect the rules of natural law. On the other hand, the representatives of the so-called bourgeois school of natural law which are described in the article (H. Grotius, T. Hobbes, S. Pufendorf, and others) did not see the question of the compatibility between statutory and natural law as unequivocally as their predecessors did, even though they too supported the notion that public authorities should, or even must, respect natural law. They did not, however, consider statutory law which violated natural law to be deprived of validity.

Como complemento al relato de John L. Heilbron, argumentaré que aunque la etiqueta ‘física experimental’ se puede usar legítimamente para describir algunos aspectos de la obra de Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), la comprensión de la ‘physica’ de este último se ha de entender dentro de un marco más amplio en el que las consideraciones teológicas, filosóficas, y teleológicas continuaron desempeñando una función importante. En primer lugar, me centraré en la concepción de van Musschenbroek en el ámbito de la ‘physica’ y en especial en su concepto de una ley de la naturaleza. Se verá que, al radicalizar algunos aspectos de las ideas metodológicas de Isaac Newton, van Musschenbroek ya no se considera la física como la disciplina que descubre las causas de efectos, como hizo Newton, sino como la disciplina que estudia los efectos de causas desconocidas. Además, se verá que van Musschenbroek pensaba que las leyes de la naturaleza están supeditadas a la libre voluntad de Dios y que son cognoscibles debido a la bondad de Dios. En segundo lugar, argumentaré que para van Musschenbroek la física, junto con la teleología, tenía claras repercusiones físico-teológicas. En el camino, por primera vez discutirá su posición en relación con el principio de razón suficiente.

Universal Principles, Global Cooperation, and Moral Disagreement:A Natural Law Account Joseph Boyle (bio) I. Introduction Since ancient times a number of Western moral views have been described or self-described as "natural law" ethics. These views claim that there are universal moral principles and norms. Moral principles, according to natural law views, are somehow "natural," and, thus, are the common property of those who share human nature. That implies that the principles of the natural law are in principle accessible to all humans. Those who accept this ethical approach are not in full agreement about the precise sense and reference of the expression "natural law" or about the specific moral norms justified by the principles of the natural law. I do not here propose to address these differences among natural law theorists. Instead, I will sketch the approach to universal moral principles that I, as a philosopher working within the natural law tradition, think correct. My approach is within the broad tradition of natural law theorizing inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas; it is the version of Thomistic natural law called the "new natural law theory."1 Natural law theories include a conception of the nature and purpose of morality. Two closely related theses comprise the key elements of this conception. The first is that moral principles, and their implications in moral norms and judgments, are propositional realities having logical relationships and normative content that can be formulated, debated and judged either correct or incorrect. Thus, natural law theory is a form of ethical rationalism; moral judgments are a form of knowledge. The second thesis holds that moral principles are universal in two senses: they are applicable to all human actions, and they are accessible to all human beings capable of the reasoning needed for choice and action. Some immediate implications of these theses are obviously important for thinking about moral diversity, difference and consensus. First, the universal applicability of moral principles implies that there are no human actions, however complex their circumstances and obscure their significance, that are in principle immune from moral assessment. Second, the universal accessibility of the principles of the natural law implies that moral norms, customs, and practices are not finally a matter of local custom or particular circumstance. Criticism in the light of accessible moral principle is always possible. Third, the conjunction of the universal accessibility of natural law and its ethical rationalism makes the possibility of recognizing mistaken moral judgment and practice more than an abstract possibility, but, instead, an ordinary, intelligible aspect of moral life and thought. Any person capable of practical reasoning and choice can access enough of moral principle to criticize his or her own moral beliefs and those of his or her society. That capability is obviously ethically significant. Its availability in reflection to people generally implies that they are not simply stuck with the moral limitations and corruption of their culture, upbringing, and life experience; they have the resources for critical judgment and autonomous action based on that reflection. These claims about the nature of morality may now seem quaint given some defining features of post-modernity. The conjunction of two features of our post-modern world poses a special problem for natural law theory: (1) the rapidly emerging globalization of economic, social and political life; and (2) the pervasiveness of post-modern relativism, and "local-only" conceptions of morality. These conceptions reject the universalist theses I listed above. But they do so in a globalized context calling for moral guidance for the world-wide interactions that transcend the moralities of local communities and their members. Together these features challenge the core convictions of natural law theory. In this contribution, I will briefly articulate and defend these strong natural law claims about the nature of morality, and will bring natural law theory to bear on the challenge posed to them by the realities of our post-modern and globalized situation. I will develop this account as follows: In part II, I will summarize the account of the human good that underlies morality according to natural law theories that follow Aquinas's classic treatment. In Part III, I will sketch an account of how universal moral principles are justified...

Cameralism, one of the most important currents of economic thought in German-speaking countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, assumes a systematic and comprehensive form in the works of Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717–1771). Justi tried to ground cameralism philosophically by way of what he termed ‘political metaphysics’. This theory essentially deals with the following topics: human nature, the state, and natural law. The aim of the present paper is to analyse the key concepts of Justi's political metaphysics as well as the line of reasoning adopted by him. It thereby sheds new light on cameralism as political metaphysics.

The Thomist 66 (2002): 275-309 JEAN PORTER ON NATURAL LAW: THOMISTIC NOTES1 LAWRENCE DEWAN, 0.P. Cotlege Dominicain Ottawa, Ontario, Canada lEAN PORTER'S RECENT BOOK Natural and Divine Law aims at making theologians aware of medieval scholastic theological discussions of natural law. The sources she consults include h theologians and canonists, extending over a period including the twelfth and much of the thirteenth century. She sees such discussions as a possible fruitful source for contemporary Christian ethics. As a former student of Etienne Gilson's, I rejoice to see this interest in medieval thought, and in its theological dimension. AB a disciple of St. Thomas, I am sure that acquaintance with the background against which he formulated his views of natural law can help one appreciate the magnitude of his accomplishment. A reader, one would hope, might benefit from such a book by coming to see how what were often confused and confusing presentations in earlier writers eventually become coherent in the works of Thomas. Many years ago, Fr. Thomas Deman used the history of moral discussions by theologians to present Thomas as the founder of moral theology, establishing its order and its place within the unity of sacra doctrina.2 However, Porter's own intentions do not run in that direction. She is interested, rather, in what a knowledge of the nitty-gritty 1 Jean Porter, Natural and Divine Law: Reclaiming the Tradition for Christian Ethics, foreword by Nicholas Wolterstorff (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdsmann, 1999). I will cite it simply by page number in my own text. 2 Thomas Deman, O.P., Aux origines de la theologie morale (Montreal: Inst. d'etudes medievales, 1951). 275 276 LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P. of medieval theological discussion can do to dispel the sort of "neat package" image of natural law that can result from the way it is presented by some modern philosophers, and even in some Church documents. Jacques Maritain used to insist on how much "rationalist recasting" and "the advent of a geometrising reason" had by the eighteenth century ruined the conception of natural law.3 An attempt to reestablish an awareness of the difficulty and variety of natural law discussion is well worth while. My own conviction, arising from my exploration of medieval natural law theory, including the texts of Thomas with their very thoughtful distinctions between levels of natural law precepts (and the possibilities or impossibilities of dispensation, whether by God alone or by human judges), is simply that natural law is not enough. One recalls the first article of the first question of the Summa Theologiae. We need a divine revelation, not only as regards knowledge of those truths that transcend human reason, but even as regards knowledge of those truths necessary for salvation which are within the range of our reason. The truths about God at which reason can arrive are known only by a few, after a long time, and with a mixture of error.4 And this need, Thomas eventually makes dear, also concerns truths about how humans should live their lives. Natural law needs the support of divine authority, at least in the present weakened condition of the human being in this world.5 3 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 8084 . 4 STh I, q. 1, a. 1. 5 Cf. STh X-ll, q. 91, a. 4 (1212a45-b2), the second reason Thomas gives for the need of a divine law: "because owing to the uncertainty of human judgment, especially concerning contingent and particular things, it happens that there are diverse judgments of diverse people concerning human acts, from which (judgments) diverse and contrary laws result. Therefore, in order that man be able without any doubt to know what is to be done and what is to be avoided, it was necessary that in his own acts he be directed by divinely given law, concerning which it is dear that it cannot err.~ On the effects of sin, original and actual, as including the dulling of reason especially regarding matters of action, cf. I-II, q. 85, aa. 1 and 3; also I-II, q. 99, a. 2, ad 2. (In references to the...

Laws of nature and natural laws

In contemporary parlance, “natural law”most commonly refers to a core doctrine of the Catholic Church and its educational institutions, according to which God has imbued nature, including human nature, with certain fundamental values or purposes which humanity can understand and which are consonant with the values taught by the Christian revelation. (See Contemporary natural law theory [Chapter 42].) The most important Catholic articulation of this idea is ascribed to the great thirteenth-century philosopher Thomas Aquinas, and accordingly it is known as “Thomistic” natural law. In modern philosophical ethics and philosophy of law, “natural law” refers to the more general idea that there is a “higher” norm, or law, that is not the work of human action, such as legislation, and bymeans of which the latter can be assessed, indeed, has to be assessed in order to be considered “valid” law. In other words, naturally given law is distinguished from “positive” law that is made (posited) by human authorities. Whatever their contemporary philosophical significance, these neat doctrineshave at best very limited relevance for understanding natural law ideas in the early modern period, from the Reformation to the end of the Enlightenment period in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. In fact, the tendency to bring our own concepts to bear upon the past has in this case, as in many others, played havoc with the appreciation of an important phase in the history of ethics. In post-Reformation Protestant countries, especially those in whose universities natural law had been transferred from the theology to the law and philosophy faculties, a form of natural law emerged whose main concern was with peace and sociability under civil government rather than with divine law. This aroused significant hostility in Catholic countries and universities and led to a certain wariness of a subject that might be seen as distinctive for Protestant culture. It was only with the so-called Catholic revival in the late nineteenth century that Thomistic natural law doctrine was invigorated to become the prominentflagship for Catholic moral engagement that it has been during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Furthermore, the general philosophical idea of a natural law as the master norm and test of legal validity cannot be clearly and uniformly applied to characterize early modern thinking on the subject, especially in Protestant states where the “new” natural law tended to converge with positive civil law. In fact, this idea of a “higher” natural law has been one of the major stumbling blocks for our understanding of significant thinkers of the period in question. The problem here, as so often in the history of ideas, is the tendency toassume that there is a core meaning of central concepts, such as natural law, and that we can trace the occurrences of these ideas in the course of history. Whether or not this ever makes sense is outside the present brief. This chapter is concerned to show, however, that natural law ideas in the early modern period can best be understood as a string of intellectual episodes that may be said to have varying degrees of family resemblance when they are considered as an intellectual and literary genre and an institutionalized resource for education, public debate and policy-making in quite different contexts. This amorphous character of natural law ideas does not detract from their significance, though that significance may be different from what is commonly expected.

DIVINE ACTION, DETERMINISM, AND THE LAWS OF NATURE by Jeffrey Koperski. New York: Routledge, 2020. 168 pages. Hardcover; $160.00. ISBN: 9780367139001. Ebook; open access. *When it comes to talking about God's action in the world and laws of nature in the science classes I teach, my students sometimes wonder if God, violating the very laws he created, is a problem. Jeffrey Koperski has written a book for those students and for you, too! You can see that Koperski is a teacher well experienced with explaining philosophical ideas to students majoring in anything but philosophy (who form the bulk of our philosophy teaching). This makes his new book a very accessible and enjoyable read. Moreover, no matter your background, you are likely to learn something new reading this book, perhaps even about your favored approach to divine action in the world. *Koperski is right to point out that philosophy of science--particularly philosophy of physics--is missing from most divine action discussions. If it enters at all, philosophy of science makes only cursory contributions. He is also right to observe that the causal closure of the physical, or of nature as a whole, gets too little attention in the divine action literature despite the outsized role it plays. Koperski ably shows why neither causal closure nor determinism are genuine obstacles to divine action in the world. Philosophy of science allows Koperski to clear a lot of this dead brush from the ground of divine action literature. This is an important contribution to the discussions. *Koperski helps us think more accurately about laws of nature (full disclosure: he and I have talked about these issues and tread a lot of the same ground). The assumption or metaphor of laws as "governing" events in nature has been accepted as largely unanalyzed in the divine action literature. Though he rarely uses this language, Koperski shows why the metaphor of laws "governing" things does not stand up to close analysis. He endorses a view of laws functioning as constraints that enables us to think more clearly about how God can act in the world without violating laws. *Koperski describes his model for divine action as decretalist and nonviolationist. The laws that scientists deal with represent divine decrees--gifts of order and constraint to creation. The regularities of creation genuinely exist and genuinely act. Koperski captures a biblical view of God's relationship to creation; he also considers natural philosophers' critical thinking about laws in the seventeenth century. *As for nonviolationism, Koperski points out that laws--the nomic conditions or features of the world--do not make things go (no "governing" metaphor). Rather, as physicists have recognized, it is forces that make things move. What laws do is provide nomic constraints on the behavior of forces (p. 134). His model is nonviolationist in that these laws are not violated when God acts in nature; rather, when there are nonnomic changes, "the laws adapt to change. This was true when we thought that nature was Newtonian, and it remains true in the age of quantum mechanics and relativity" (p. 135). Koperski's account is consistent with what I think physics reveals to us about the laws of nature--they function as typicality conditions: A law tells us what to expect for the behavior of forces on a system typical for the constraints represented by the law. But when new factors or conditions are introduced, the law does not tell us what to expect. The typicality is shattered, but not the law. Yet, this does not distress physicists; we know how to model and calculate what happens with these additional factors that the original law did not cover. *Consider a simple example: A grandfather clock keeps time well because of the lawlike regularities involved in its functioning. Yet, if I use my finger to keep the minute hand from moving forward, the clock will cease keeping time accurately. No laws have been violated; however, a genuine physical change has taken place regarding the clock's functioning. The regularities are still there--the laws are still operative--but they adapt to the presence of a new effect or force introduced into the clock system. What this means is that "once the laws of nature are distinguished from the behavior that is the result of those laws and nonnomic conditions, we find a vast space of contingency in which God can act" (p. 135). Koperski calls this a "neoclassical model of special divine action" (p. 135) because God is not manipulating laws to act in the world. If humans can make genuine nonnomic changes to nature without violating laws (e.g., rockets that overcome gravity's pull), clearly God is able to. The question then becomes one of God's relationship to the contingent order he has given creation. *You may be thinking of possible objections to this account of divine action. Koperski discusses several and I recommend you read what he has to say about them. I will briefly discuss what seem to be the most serious--that is, possible violations of energy conservation. There are many reasons to think that conservation laws function as constraints on systems when particular conditions hold. For instance, as Koperski points out, according to general relativity, energy conservation does not apply to an expanding universe. In a dynamic spacetime, the motion of objects does not conserve energy. More generally, any system whose dynamics depend on time will fail to conserve energy, and there are lots of such systems in the actual world. Physicists have precise ways of quantifying how much a system violates energy conservation and describing the resulting order of the system in question. The idea that any system violating energy conservation can always be embedded into a larger system restoring conservation is just that--an idea and nothing more. Physicists do not have any good reasons supporting this idea (though some defend it to maintain their reductionist intuitions). There is plenty of opportunity for divine action in the world and energy conservation is never an issue. *One could sweat some details. For example, Koperski rehearses arguments to the effect that quantum processes suppress chaos, thus undercutting the amplification of small quantum changes to macroworld effects (pp. 52-53). While it is true that quantum mechanics is no friend of chaos, the amplification argument is more along the lines of a chaotic macroscopic system being sensitive to quantum fluctuations; this doesn't depend on the existence of so-called quantum chaos. There always are stringent constraints on such amplification, however; so, Koperski is correct that banking on this as a route for divine action is still a hopeless cause. And I am not convinced that physics and philosophy of science are pointing toward an eventual rejection of ontological randomness in quantum mechanics (pp. 60-63). Irreducible randomness is not lawless chaos; it is a form of order that God has given to creation even if it offends the deterministic intuitions of some physicists and philosophers. None of Koperski's account stands or falls with these quibbles. *I would like to see Koperski's account enriched with the doctrine of creation, such as in Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins: Cosmology, Geology and Biology in Christian Perspective, Robert C. Bishop et al. (IVP Academic, 2018). His discussion in sec. 4.2 suggests that seventeenth-century natural philosophers eventually ditched all forms of divine-mediated action for direct or unmediated divine action as embodied in the laws of nature (the discussion is a little oversimplified, but this is a short book). This amounts to treating the laws of nature as the main mediators of all that happens in creation (back to the "governing" metaphor). In contrast, the doctrine of creation's emphasis on multiple forms of divine-mediated action helps to address the divine relationship to creation in which God is working in and through nature, not outside and apart from it. This is exactly what Koperski's account needs for some of the questions he entertains at the end of the book and for some he leaves unanswered (e.g., why one does not have to restrict divine concurrence to Thomist models only). *Reviewed by Robert C. Bishop, Department of Physics and Engineering, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187.

Law of Nations as Reason of State: Diplomacy and the Balance of Power in Vattel’s Law of Nations Richard Devetak (bio) I: Introduction The eighteenth-century European states-system witnessed the development of key practices and institutions exclusive to states’ external relations. These included the establishment of foreign ministries, the incipient professionalization and expansion of resident diplomacy, and conscious management of the balance of power.1 These practices and institutions prompted sovereigns to develop administrative machinery capable of promoting state interests in the fluid political context of a European states-system. They also afforded scholars and practitioners an opportunity to construct theoretical programmes aimed at generating or exploiting the kind of practical knowledge useful to sovereigns for the purposes of foreign policy. This essay suggests that Emer de Vattel’s Le Droit des Gens (hereafter referred to by its English title, Law of Nations), originally published in 1758, is best understood as a response to developments in the diplomatic and strategic context, articulated through the intellectual resources available under the laws of nature and nations.2 Motivated by concern over moral and imperialist, as well as lingering confessional and dynastic, threats to Europe’s states-system, his intention was to write a practical contribution to the law of nature and nations, one capable of informing statecraft in a system composed of states with competing interests and uneven strengths. Vattel’s reconstruction of modern natural law improvised a more pragmatic, normative programme for the diplomatic management of Europe’s [End Page 105] states-system. This reconstruction was made necessary by the realization that relations among sovereign states are fundamentally different from relations within them, and that this difference should yield characteristically different rules and institutions to manage the different political practices and problems that arise in this milieu. The transformations in statecraft and the various diplomatic and strategic developments Europe experienced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided a context for Vattel’s reception and modification of the laws of nature and nations. Vattel’s reconstructive efforts, in attuning the law of nations to the empirical circumstances and political realities of the European states-system, granted the law of nations a certain amount of separation and autonomy from the law of nature, as if the connection between the two laws were mediated by a kind of clutch mechanism. Just as a clutch mechanism enables a user to control, limit, or adjust the transmission of power, from, say, an automobile engine to the wheels or a drill motor to the chuck, so as to deliver variable degrees of power or torque, Vattel analogously permits wielders of the law of nations a variable control over how much it engages or disengages from the law of nature. Vattel’s modifications gave rise to a law of nations which permits statesmen to adjust or limit the extent to which the moral authority of natural law empowers or constrains statecraft. This had the important political consequence for Vattel of furnishing a distinctive set of rules (and accompanying institutions) for governing the conduct of sovereign territorial states in the European states-system, and thereby emancipating international politics from the influence of universalizing Christian or imperial moralities. By so doing, Vattel reinscribed the law of nations in reason of state, and posited the idea that, when it comes to relations among states, states legitimately adhere to unique forms of moral reasoning and political calculation. To show how Vattel’s reconstructed law of nations accommodates reason of state imperatives, the essay proceeds in four parts. First, I introduce the topic by positioning Vattel in relation both to the reason of state literature and to the law of nature and nations upon which Vattel primarily draws. Second, I provide an extended account of Vattel’s reconstruction of natural law, showing how it disengages the law of nations from the law of nature, and situating Vattel’s treatise in historiographies of the law of nature and nations. In the third part, I elaborate the diplomatic casuistry Vattel introduced into his Law of Nations, explaining how it legitimates the rights of self-preservation, security, and war in a context of changing diplomatic practices. Finally, I restate the argument that Vattel’s...

In this article, I discuss manuscript material written by Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761) related to his first experiments with the Leiden jar. Despite the importance of the discovery of the Leiden jar for the history of electricity and the questions that still surround its discovery, a detailed treatment of this manuscript material is lacking in the literature. The main aim of this paper is to provide an outline of the manuscript material and to contextualize van Musschenbroek's first experiments with the Leiden jar. I show how the experiment fits within his research program on electricity and I discuss van Musschenbroek's initial reactions to and analysis of the phenomenon. Before doing so, I first provide a short overview of the treatment of the early history of the Leiden jar in the secondary literature. After that, I discuss van Musschenbroek's treatment of the topic of electricity in the textbooks he published in the years before the discovery of the device. Van Musschenbroek repeatedly emphasized that not enough experimental results were available for an informed theoretical treatment of the phenomenon of electricity to be possible. I then turn to the manuscript material, where I give a general description of the contents of the manuscript and van Musschenbroek's experimental practice. The manuscript material further confirms recent work on the Leiden jar by Silva and Heering, and provides new insights into the way van Musschenbroek himself reacted to the discovery.

Reviewed by: Laws of Nature by Walter Ott Michael J. Futch OTT, Walter and Lydia Patton, editors. Laws of Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ix + 264 pp. Cloth, $65.00 This wide-ranging collection of essays examines the metaphysical underpinnings and implications of competing accounts of laws of nature. The first six essays offer interpretations of key figures in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the remaining six essays providing contributions to current debates on the topic. This is not to suggest a sharp bifurcation between the exegetical and the philosophical, however, as most authors show an appreciation for the reciprocal illumination of contemporary philosophy and its history. To avoid a fragmented discussion, I will focus only on those essays of most interest to readers of this journal. One way to understand early modern debates about laws of nature is in terms of a bottom-up as opposed to a top-down approach. On the former understanding, laws are grounded in things' natures and powers, whereas the latter sees them as being externally imposed by God. Using this framework, Walter Ott argues that Bacon and Spinoza both opt for a bottom-up approach that renounces an unalloyed mechanism. Laws just are the powers of things inscribed into their natures, and yet are still lawlike insofar as they express unchanging dispositions. One [End Page 803] consequence of this is that the world is governed by a multiplicity of natures and laws that can obstruct each other. Stathos Psillos also employs these interpretive categories in his discussion of Descartes, Malebranche, Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, and Newton. For these thinkers, laws, like the powers they displace, impose either metaphysically or naturally necessary connections in nature, even if such necessities cannot be inferred from observed regularities. This necessity, however, is top-down and not bottom-up since it emanates from a law giver and not bodies' powers. In their contributions, Helen Hattab and Mary Domski examine Descartes's relation to his predecessors and successors. Hattab identifies three features of Descartes's laws—they are universal, play a causal role in nature, and determine every outcome in nature—whose provenance she seeks to trace. Hattab shows that the first two features are presaged in the works of late fifteenth-century Aristotelians, but since these same thinkers posit bottom-up active powers that determine changes, the third is not. Sebastian Basso, contrariwise, is a more direct precursor to Descartes since one finds all three characteristics of laws in his oeuvre. Domski defends Descartes against the criticisms of Newtonians that his derivation of the laws of nature from God's immutable nature compromises divine freedom and overstates the capacity of human reason to comprehend the God's essence. On her reading, Descartes's laws are certain and necessary only from the vantage point of human reason. Similarly, Newton's laws are best understood as principles that, as applied to mathematical bodies, are indubitable and rationally certain. The differences between Descartes and Newton are therefore not as sharp as might initially appear. Angela Breitenbach elucidates Kant's views on laws of nature in a way that simultaneously preserves their nomic necessity and knowability. Arguing against alternative accounts that achieve one at the expense of the other, Breitenbach maintains that our access to specific natural laws is through "empirical reflection." This means that empirical inquiry searches for laws that systematically unify nature and that take the necessary form imposed by a priori principles of reason. Several of the later essays revolve around the Best System Account, which sees laws as true generalizations that supervene on nonnomic facts and are part of the system that achieves the best balance between strength and simplicity. Especially notable here is Michela Massimi's convincing argument in favor of a perspectivalist version of the BSA that recognizes that, rather than being fixed, standards of simplicity and strength differ throughout the history of science. Natural laws are nomically necessary just in case they figure in perspectives that vary across time and scientific communities. This account both remains grounded in the actual practice of scientific communities and yields laws resilient to theory change. Of the entries not principally historically oriented, those by Stephen Mumford and by...

Immanuel Kant’s complex and nuanced view on the laws of nature has been at the center of renewed attention among Kant scholars since the late 20th century. Kant’s view is one of the best examples in the Early Modern period of the philosophical view of nature as “ordered” and “lawful” that emerged with the scientific advancements of the 17th and 18th centuries. Building on the extraordinary success of Isaac Newton’s mechanics and optics, but also on the burgeoning chemistry of Stephen Hales in England and Herman Boerhaave and Pieter van Musschenbroek in the Netherlands, among many others, Kant’s lifelong engagement with the natural sciences (broadly construed) influenced and fed into his mature Critical-period philosophy. Explaining why laws of nature seemingly govern the natural world (as much as the moral law regulates the realm of human freedom and choice) is key to Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant seems to embrace a coherent account of what it is to be a law, in moral philosophy and in theoretical philosophy. When it comes to theoretical philosophy (and in particular, to Kant’s philosophy of nature, which is our topic), the main question is how it is possible for us to come to know nature as ordered and lawful. Where does the lawfulness of nature come from? In the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena, Kant held the view that our faculty of understanding is the primary source of nature’s lawfulness because the a priori categories of the understanding “prescribe laws to nature”—that is, they play the role of constitutive a priori principles for our experience of nature. Yet, already in the first Critique, and even more so in Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant stressed the importance of the faculty of reason, first, and the faculty of reflective judgment, second—with their regulative principles—in offering a system of laws necessary for our knowledge of nature. The crucial distinction between constitutive principles of the understanding versus regulative principles of reason and reflective judgment leads, in turn, to a series of further distinctions in Kant’s philosophy. For example, it leads to the different status of laws in the physical sciences and in the life sciences, which in turn became the battleground for the debate concerning mechanical explanations versus teleological explanations.

A commentary on The Principles of Psychology by James, W. (1890). New York, NY: Holt. James consecrated the fourth chapter of his Principles of Psychology to the explanation of the idea of habit, for “when we look at living creatures from an outward point of view, one of the first things that strike us is that they are bundles of habits. In wild animals, the usual round of daily behavior seems a necessity implanted at birth; in animals domesticated, and especially in man, it seems, to a great extent, to be the result of education. The habits to which there is an innate tendency are called instincts; some of those due to education would by most persons be called acts of reason” (James, 1890). The first relevant idea exposed by William James concerns the importance of plasticity in the development of all organic forms. Habit, enabled by this universally manifested–though in growing degrees- plasticity, is the biological correlate of the idea of natural law in the inanimate universe. In his own words, “the laws of Nature are nothing but the immutable habits which the different elementary sorts of matter follow in their actions and reactions upon each other.” Habit as the organic transposition of a natural law constitutes one of the guiding principles of James approach to this category. Its sources can be found in several authors. One of them is Leon Dumont (1837–1877), a French psychologist whose essay De l'Habitude (Dumont, 1876) is quoted by James in the above mentioned chapter. In this text, Dumont, following August Comte (1798–1857), had written that the idea of habit expresses, better than anyone else, the notion of a gradual acquisition of new faculties. According to him, the evolutionary perspective (recently discovered at his time) finds a good ally in the idea of habit, for it contains the progressive perfectibility of all beings, including man. In his studies of habit, sensibility and evolution, Dumont understood habit in analogy with the laws of inanimate nature. A second major source of influence on James is the work of William Benjamin Carpenter (1813–1885), an English physician and physiologist who had done extensive work on comparative neurology. He spoke in terms of “adaptive unconscious” (Carpenter, 1874), in which there are resonances of Hermann von Helmholtz's (1821–1894) conception of thought and perception as drawing unconscious hypotheses and inferring probabilistic accounts about the surrounding environment (Helmholtz, 1867). According to this theory, thought and perception would operate, to a large extent, without awareness, and we would remain unconscious about a substantial body of mental phenomena which we consider rooted in the deepest powers of consciousness. As in the case of Dumont, in Carpenter there is a clear influence of Darwin's theory of evolution. James conceived of a habit as the fruit of the exceptional plasticity of organic life, whose versatility would have played a significant role in favoring the adaption to different environment, needs, and challenges. But beyond the biological and evolutionary basis of habits, James wanted to unfold the formation of this kind of automatized behavior. To answer this question, he found inspiration in the work of English utilitarian philosophers like Alexander Bain (1818–1903) and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Bain, a Scottish psychologist and a leading figure of empiricism, had like Mill (whom he revered) endorsed an associationist approach to the acquisition of new behaviors (Bain, 1868). James went a step further and delineated a refined view of habits in which the ideas of plasticity, automatization, and association were carefully bounded. For him, a habit corresponded to a general form of discharge that helped concentrate energies on unpredicted challenges. As he wrote, following Carpenter's idea that our nervous system grows to the modes in which it has been exercised, “habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue” (James, 1890). In James' view, this is perhaps the most remarkable feature of a habit: it diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed. The precedents to this idea can be found in the work of the French spiritualist philosopher Francois-Pierre Maine de Biran (1766–1824). According to James, the ability to act without the concourse of will has clear advantages. In a habitual action, mere sensation suffices for eliciting muscular movements, so that the upper regions of the brain and mind are set “comparatively free,” unless they go wrong and they immediately call our attention (James, 1890). This liberation shows extremely beneficial for displaying a larger array of actions.

One of the leading political and economic German thinkers in the eighteenth century, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717–1771), transformed the cameral sciences into sciences of state (Staatswissenschaft) by giving them a foundation in natural law. The aim of this article is to show that the natural law of Justi was not, as has previously often been claimed, the anti-voluntarist, metaphysical and rational natural law of Christian Wolff. Quite the contrary: Justi was a follower of one of Wolff's most fervent opponents, Johann Jacob Schmauss (1690–1757), whose natural law was radically voluntaristic and anti-metaphysical. Justi's natural law must be seen as part of a larger transformation that took place in the natural law theories of the German Enlightenment. Building on the ideas of Johann Jacob Schmauss, Justi was part and parcel of the change from reason-based natural law into a theory that put the main emphasis on human instinct and passions as the source of moral action. These universal instincts were argued to be the foundation of natural rights, which as this article demonstrates, could be extended to entail human rights.