Laws and Lawmakers

Laws of nature have long puzzled philosophers. What distinguishes laws from facts about the world that do not rise to the level of laws? How can laws be contingent and nevertheless necessary? In this brief, accessible study, Lange offers provocative and original answers to these questions. He argues that laws are distinguished by their necessity, which is grounded in primitive subjunctive facts (expressed by counterfactual conditionals). While recognizing that natural necessity is distinct from logical, metaphysical, and mathematical necessity, Lange explains how natural necessity constitutes a species of the same genus as those other varieties of necessity. Along the way, Lange discusses the relation between laws and objective chances, as well as such unjustly neglected topics as the completeness of the laws of physics and whether the laws of nature can change. Lange's elegant, engagingly written book is non-technical and suitable for undergraduate philosophers (and undergraduate scientists interested in the logical foundations of science). It is "must reading" for metaphysicians and philosophers of science working on laws, chance, counterfactuals, modality, or the philosophy of physics.

ISBN 0195328140   Pages 276 ISBN13 9780195328141 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press Inc   Weight (grammes) 324 Imprint Oxford University Press Inc   Published in New York Format Paperback   Height (mm) 209 Publication date 30 Jul 2009   Width (mm) 139 Library of Congress 2008041648   Spine width (mm) 15 DEWEY 113   Academic level Undergraduate DEWEY edition DC22

1		Laws Form Counterfactually Stable Sets		1
1. 1		Welcome		3
1.2		Their Necessity Sets the Laws Apart		4
1.3		The Laws' Persistence under Counterfactuals		8
1.4		Nomic Preservation		12
1.5		Beyond Nomic Preservation		20
1.6		A Host of Related Problems: Triviality, Circularity, Arbitrariness		25
1.7		Sub-nomic Stability		28
1.8		No Nonmaximal Set Containing Accidents Possesses Sub-nomic Stability		32
1.9		How Two Sub-nomically Stable Sets Must Be Related: Multiple Strata of Natural Laws		37
1.10		Why the Laws Would Still Have Been Laws		42
1.11		Conclusion: Laws Form Stable Sets		43
2		Natural Necessity		45
2.1		What It Would Take to Understand Natural Necessity		45
2.2		The Euthyphro Question		46
2.3		David Lewis's "Best System Account"		49
2.4		Lewis's Account and the Laws' Supervenience		51
2.5		The Euthyphro Question Returns		56
2.6		Are All Relative Necessities Created Equal?		59
2.7		The Modality Principle		63
2.8		A Proposal for Distinguishing Genuine from Merely Relative Modalities		67
2.9		Borrowing a Strategy from Chapter 1		71
2.10		Necessity as Maximal Invariance		74
2.11		The Laws Form a System		80
2.12		Scientific Essentialism Squashes the Pyramid		82
		More...

Marc Lange takes a refreshingly open-minded and original approach to laws of nature... highly recommended to all philosophers of science who are interested in laws of nature and neighbouring topics. Reading Lange's book will certainly pay off as a serious and carefully argued challenge to many received opinions on laws of nature. Alexander Reutlinger, The Philosophical Quarterly

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