Abstract
Abstract This article derives some morals from the examination of the physico-mathematical view of scientific laws and its place in the current philosophical debate on laws of nature. After revisiting the expression scientific law, which appears in scientific practice under various names (such as laws, principles, equations, symmetries, and postulates), I briefly assess two extreme, opposite positions in the literature on laws, namely, full-blown metaphysics of laws of nature, which distinguishes such laws from the more mundane laws that we find in science; and nomological eliminativism, which ultimately contends that we should dispense with laws in science altogether. I argue that both positions fail to make sense of the laws that we find in scientific practice. For this, I outline the following twofold claim: first, most laws in physics are abstract mathematical statements; and second, they express some of the best physical generalisations achieved in this branch of science. Thus understood, a minimal construal of laws suggests that they are in principle intended to refer to those features of phenomena whose salience and stability are relevant for specific scientific tasks.
Highlights
This article derives some morals from the examination of the physico-mathematical view of scientific laws and its place in the current philosophical debate on laws of nature
I shall address the following concerns: do metaphysical approaches to the laws of nature account for the laws that we find in science? Can we dispense with laws in our understanding of scientific practice? Do laws in physics amount to more or less complex, abstract mathematical statements that intend at least in principle to inform us about reality?
In 3.2, I address the second cluster of views, which corresponds to anti-metaphysical approaches that I label nomological eliminativism
Summary
As practice in physics routinely demonstrates, law statements play a variety of roles They help scientists express some of the best physical generalisations achieved by means of empirical and mathematical research. An initial insight into what physical generalisation means can be obtained by looking at the distinction between phenomenological and fundamental laws.3 Fundamental laws aim at explaining ideal systems that fail to find an exact correlate in reality Examples of this latter sort are those of the symmetries of the standard model of particle physics and the laws of general relativity, both of which require a good deal of mathematical idealisations that are satisfied by further, less-abstract mathematical models of the world. It is not easy to find out a difference between those abstract mathematical statements that scientists call laws and those that, by contrast, are abstract and mathematical, but do not bear a law-like status in inferential practices
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