Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Laws: A. Laws are rules created and enforced by governments to regulate behavior, protect people's rights, and promote order and justice in society. - B. Laws of nature are fundamental principles that describe how the universe works. They are universal and unchanging. - C. The status of laws in the individual sciences is controversial, since they may only describe regularities. See also Natural laws, Regularities, Principles._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Hennig Genz on Laws - Dictionary of Arguments
II 152 Things/laws/Genz: with mathematisation, the primacy of things over laws was broken and the laws of nature were at the beginning. II 248 Natural Laws/laws of nature/Genz: could it be that the laws of nature we consider necessary do not apply in other parts of the universe because other conditions are realized there? Then these laws of nature are not fundamental. System: a system is important for laws: e. g. Galileo's laws of falling bodies are only valid in the space close to earth. System: e.g. stone and earth together with their masses. Small G/constant/Galilei: g is the gravitational acceleration. It applies only in the space close to earth and it is part of the stone/Earth system itself. II 249 Large G/Newton: G is the gravitational constant. It applies also to a greater distance from Earth. Proximity to Earth/System/Newton: proximity to Earth is a characteristic of the system for Newton, not the system itself. >Laws/Newton. Natural Laws/laws/system/property/condition/Genz: when we speak of unknown laws, it is impossible to reliably distinguish between the system and its possible states and its initial conditions! Cf. >Regularities, >Natural laws. Phenomenal Laws/appearances/Law/Genz: phenomenal laws may have preconditions that are not lawful (e.g. initial conditions). >Laws/Cartwright, II 269 Definition laws of the first type/1st type/Eddington/Genz: laws of the first type are e. g. deterministic laws such as the Newtonian ones, the ones of the elastic shock, Maxwell's equations or laws of quantum mechanics. They ban things that are impossible. Definition laws of the second type/2nd type: laws of the second type are e.g. those of the kinetic gas theory (more general: of thermodynamics) and in particular the Second Principle. II 270 They forbid things that are so unlikely that they can never happen (statistical laws). II 274 Laws of the 1st type/Schrödinger/Genz: from the fact that there is such a 2nd type, one cannot conclude that there are laws of the 1st type at all. Regularless microscopic processes can also lead to the same macroscopic laws that result from averaging as they do. These averages show their own purely statistical regularity. This would also be present if it had come about through rolling a dice. Schrödinger: thesis: therefore, the microscopic processes do not actually run causally. Many authors: VsSchrödinger. >Quantum mechanics._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Gz I H. Genz Gedankenexperimente Weinheim 1999 Gz II Henning Genz Wie die Naturgesetze Wirklichkeit schaffen. Über Physik und Realität München 2002 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-18