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Natural Laws
~11.5 mins read
L
Laws of Nature
Yael Kedar
Multidisciplinary Studies, Tel-Hai College,
Kiryat Shmona, Israel
Abstract
Many historians of science consider laws of
nature a modern category. Some, however,
claim for the consolidation of a nomic con-
ception of nature in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries. The ï¬rst time that speciï¬c
laws were formulated in medieval texts was
in the scientiï¬c works of Robert Grosseteste
(c.1175–1253), who stated the law of refrac-
tion and the law of reflection of light rays, and
of Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292/1293), who
added the law of the gravity of water and the
law of universal nature. It is probable that
Bacon’s concept of optical law had reached
the modern times before Descartes. The nom-
inalists-voluntarists of the fourteenth century,
and most prominently William of Ockham
(1288–c.1348), may have had an important
part in the emergence of the concept of laws
too. They rejected the realism of forms and
immanent factors and stressed the sovereignty
of God in creating and the contingency of his
imposed decrees. This philosophy of nature
provided a context within which the idea of a
law of nature was comprehensible and natural.
It had reached seventeenth-century scientists
through Martin Luther (1483–1546).
Laws of Nature
Laws of nature are deï¬ned as general statements
about the properties of natural entities, relating
various variables and constants. A law of nature
is thought to have counterfactual implications, to
presuppose certain idealized conditions, and to
have quantitative aspects and explanatory power.
Many historians of science hold to the view that
laws of nature became an essential concept in
scientiï¬c practice and theory from the seventeenth
and even eighteenth century onward (Needham
1969; Henry 2004). They contend that before
that time, the use of “lawâ€in connection with
natural regularities had been in use –if at all –
merely as a loose metaphor or a restricted state-
ment of principles of mathematics, never as
explanatory proposition in natural philosophy
(Henry 2004). Order in pre-seventeenth century
science was based on logical relations, hierarchy,
forms, or similarities, so the story goes. Following
Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, the distinction
between ideal order and rough actuality was con-
ceived as the distinction between celestial and
#Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017
H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1151-5_555-1
terrestrial realms. Orderliness descends from
higher to lower and is lost as one moves from
higher causes to lower effects (Wilson 2008).
The contention that laws of nature are to be
considered exclusively a modern category did not
remain unchallenged. Leaving aside arguments in
favor of an ancient Roman conception of laws of
nature in Lucretius and Cicero, this entry reviews
the claim for the consolidation of a nomic con-
ception of nature in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, well ahead of the scientiï¬c revolution.
One ï¬nds several allusions to the term in the
twelfth century. Writers on nature such as William
of Conches (c. 1080–c. 1154) and the Platonist
Bernard Silvester (fl. c. 1143–1148) had used
“lawâ€freely. In a metaphysical work by Hermann
of Carinthia (fl. 1138–1143), habitudo is deï¬ned
as our means of knowing “qua lege [literally, by
what law] things occur,â€and in the poems of Alan
of Lille (c. 1128–1202/3) a personiï¬ed Nature
lays down laws (Ruby 1986). In the thirteenth
century, the phrase “laws of natureâ€(and also
“of multiplicationâ€and “of material formsâ€)is
found in the writings of Roger Bacon (c.
1220–1292/3) and, in the fourteenth century, in
the writings of William of Ockham
(1288–c.1348), Nicole Oresme (1320–1382),
and Henry of Langenstein (c. 1325–1397), who
used the phrase “secundum legem agencium
naturaliterâ€in his work on comets (Questio de
cometa). At the end of the fourteenth century
and the beginning of the ï¬fteenth, one ï¬nds the
phrase in Pierre d’Ailly (1350–1420) and Jean
Gerson (1363–1429). The use of the phrase, how-
ever, did not necessarily mean that the modern
sense was present and that a fully grown concep-
tion of laws of nature was at stake. Moreover, in
some cases, a nomic conception can be present but
not accompanied by the expected terminology.
Nevertheless, appropriate terminology could
serve as an indication that some medievals were
thinking of nature as governed by laws long
before they were in a position to state any of the
laws themselves.
An instance of a speciï¬c formulation of such
laws is found in the thirteenth century. This is the
ï¬rst time that one ï¬nds not only the general state-
ment that such laws exist but also the ï¬rst
formulation of speciï¬c laws. Their locus is the
scientiï¬c works of Robert Grosseteste
(c.1175–1253) and Roger Bacon.
Grosseteste developed an original light meta-
physics, in which the universe is created out of a
dimensionless point of light, which he called “the
form of corporeityâ€(De luce). The form of corpo-
reity multiplies itself inï¬nitely, thus creating the
material universe by inserting dimensions onto
matter. It therefore exists wherever there is matter.
The ability to provide explanations based upon a
form present throughout nature enables a reduc-
tion to a minimal number of principles and renders
those explanations universal: the same few prin-
ciples can be used in different ways, in accounts of
different phenomena. In this way Grosseteste was
able to describe natural processes in general state-
ments about the behavior of light, rather than by
deï¬nitions of speciï¬c natures (Kedar 2016).
Light, or the form of corporeity, multiplying
equally in all directions in straight lines, intro-
duces dimensions into matter in a way which can
be described and measured by the laws of geom-
etry. Light, the source of all causal action, became
thus the key to the study of the material universe.
Grosseteste believed that geometry provides pro-
pter quid knowledge of the physical aspects of
natural phenomena, even though he could not
always supply convincing geometrical explana-
tions. This is why he is thought by some to have
started the project of mathematization of nature
and the move away from explanation by form to
explanation by law (Crombie 1959). Grosseteste
indeed set up some quantitative lawlike rules,
such as that natural force is more active when
propagated in straight lines and that the force is
strong in inverse proportion to the length of the
line. In De iride Grosseteste formulated a law of
refraction, according to which rays passing from
one medium to another, which is denser, will be
refracted at an angle equal to half the angle of
incidence, and the law of reflection, stating that
the incident and reflected angles are equal.
Grosseteste was completely original in this for-
mulation. No such law existed in any earlier
known treatise on optics or natural science in
general (Eastwood 1967). These laws were
based on the principle of uniformity in nature,
2 Laws of Nature
which states that a natural action will always
occur in the same way, assuming identical condi-
tions; in fact, the agent considered by itself will
always act in the same way, but the effects may
vary with change in external conditions (East-
wood 1967).
Roger Bacon took Grosseteste’s methodologi-
cal convictions and developed them further. He
was the ï¬rst in the medieval period to invoke the
concept “law of natureâ€as a comprehensive,
unconditionally binding, and constitutive order-
ing of nature. His laws displayed a necessary,
causal connection between geometrical properties
and physical effects. He stressed the universal and
uniform aspects of these laws. Bacon formulated
laws of nature of several types, including the law
of the gravity of water and the laws of the multi-
plication of species (Kedar 2016). â€Wonderful,â€
Bacon declared, “is the power of this multiplica-
tion, since all things hidden and revealed happen
in accordance with its lawsâ€(Bacon Opus majus
4.4.3). His laws of multiplication (which included
the laws of refraction and reflection) qualify for
most of the properties of the modern conception of
laws, such as an if/then formulation, counterfac-
tual implications, independence of space-time,
explanatory power, and systematicity (Kedar and
Hon 2018). Most telling was Bacon’s treatment of
the problem of the water remaining in the clepsy-
dra in opposition to their natural inclination to
flow downward. Bacon did not employ the Aris-
totelian terminology of substance, species, genus,
and the four causes. Instead, he appealed to a
“universal natureâ€of the continuity of matter,
without which the general order of the world
machine would not hold on. The law of “universal
natureâ€overpowers the “particular natureâ€of the
water and provides nature with unity and order
(Schramm 1981). It may be the case that Bacon’s
concept of optical law had reached modern times
before Descartes (1596–1650), through the
Perspectiva of John Peckham (c. 1230–1292),
which Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) read (Ruby
1986). John Peckham was to draw on Bacon in
saying that in certain circumstances vision pro-
ceeds according to the “law of spiritsâ€(spirituum)
rather than the “law of diaphanousness.â€In the
ï¬fteenth century, Regiomontanus (1436–1476)
pointed to Bacon as an authority in optics and
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455) paraphrased the
Perspectiva in his Third Commentary without
acknowledgment. In the sixteenth century,
Francesco Maurolico (1494–1575), the astrono-
mer from Messina, drew directly on Bacon’s
Perspectiva in his Photismi de lumine et umbra
and so did Giambattista Della Porta (1535–1615)
in his De Refractione, even though he did not
provide references or mentioned Bacon by name
(Ruby 1986). All four used lex of optical phenom-
ena, and Regiomontanus (1436-76) used lex also
in astronomy and mathematics (Ruby 1986). The
signiï¬cant similarities between the concept of
laws held by Roger Bacon and by Francis Bacon
(1561–1626) and Robert Boyle (1627–1691),
such as the distinction between the laws of uni-
versal nature from laws of a particular nature,
strengthen the claim for historical continuity
(Steinle 1995).
Even though they did not bequeath any formu-
lation of speciï¬c laws, it is argued that medieval
nominalists-voluntarists, of which the most prom-
inent was William of Ockham, had an important
function in the historical emergence of the concept
of laws in the seventeenth century. Some goes
further to claim that a complete conception of
laws was in fact already there. The nominalist-
voluntarist thesis holds that the major influence of
Ockham and his successors was less on the con-
tent of the scientiï¬c ideas themselves than on the
new metaphysics and philosophy of nature which
they began and which was further developed by
the advocates of the new mechanical philosophy.
It was this philosophy of nature that provided a
context within which the idea of a law of nature
was both comprehensible and natural (Milton
1981). The metaphysics which Ockham and his
successors proposed was made of the following
tenets: there exists an inï¬nite gap between the
omnipotent God and the created world; every-
thing which exists is an individual –metaphysical
realism is to be rejected altogether; God governs
the world, not by means of intermediaries, but
directly, by regulating the motions of every single
body; creation, therefore, is radically contingent
(Milton 1981). From all this, it follows that God’s
rule of the universe is executed in a manner of
Laws of Nature 3
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Cheffdbelove
Knowledge Of HORRICANE
~6.1 mins read
| Category 4 major hurricane (SSHWS/NWS) | |
 Hurricane Gonzalo at peak intensity north of the Greater Antilles on October 16 | |
| Formed | October 12, 2014 |
|---|---|
| Dissipated | October 20, 2014 |
| (Extratropical after October 19) | |
| Highest winds | 1-minute sustained: 145 mph (230 km/h) |
| Lowest pressure | 940 mbar (hPa); 27.76 inHg |
| Fatalities | 3 while tropical; 3 while extratropical |
| Damage | > $317 million (2014 USD) |
| Areas affected | Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Europe |
| Part of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season | |
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