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Laws of Nature

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Between Rationalism and Empiricism

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Abstract

For a long time the major task in the field of the laws of nature was seen in finding necessary and sufficient criteria for the lawlikeness of a statement occurring in physics.1 But all attempts of this kind have failed, and the papers of this chapter, full of mistakes as they might be, do not repeat the mistake of adding one more proposal of what it is for a statement to be lawlike. Instead the major topic of the chapter is an astonishingly unnoticed phenomenon that may be called the polarity (or complementarity or reciprocity) of generality and coherence. It is treated in all papers (except [15]), with special care in [18] and [19], whereas in [16] and [17] the two side issues of predication and substances in modern physics are added. In [15] the concept of coherence is confronted with that of contingency.

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References

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  2. See also: [4], §III, Scheibe 1973d, 1986b, 1987a and for examples of reduction: Scheibe 1997b and 1999.

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  3. First published as Scheibe 1989c

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  15. First published as Scheibe 1991b

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  22. An introduction to this tradition is Praenkel et al. 21973.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Moorbirkenkamp 2A, 22391, Hamburg, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Erhard Scheibe

Authors
  1. Prof. Dr. Erhard Scheibe
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Philosophie, Universität Dortmund, Emil-Figge-Strasse 50, 44227, Dortmund, Germany

    Brigitte Falkenburg

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Scheibe, E. (2001). Laws of Nature. In: Falkenburg, B. (eds) Between Rationalism and Empiricism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0183-7_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0183-7_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-6555-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0183-7

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