Laws in Nature What are the laws of nature? Do they control the actions and movements of the other things that exist in our world? Is there a sense in which such laws are real things? Both scientists and philosophers have been attracted by the view that the world contains laws of nature. It is such laws that dictate the behaviour of particulars, rather than any of those things’ intrinsic or internal forces. In this book Stephen Mumford argues against this popular view. He shows that no adequate account has been produced of what such laws in nature would be, or how they would perform the work that has been required of them. In their place, he argues that there are other necessary connections in nature that can do all the work for which we thought laws were needed. This book offers a holistic and connected account of reality in which the world’s elements do not need to be activated or controlled by laws. It is not possible that these elements behave other than they do. The world is more of a jigsaw than a mosaic: its pieces can form only one picture, and laws are no part of it. Stephen Mumford is Reader in Metaphysics in the Department of Philo- sophy at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Dispositions (1998) and various papers in metaphysics. He is editor of Russell on Meta- physics (2003) and Powers by the late George Molnar (2003). Routledge studies in twentieth-century philosophy 1 The Story of Analytic Philosophy Plot and heroes Edited by Anat Biletzki and Anat Matar 2 Donald Davidson Truth, meaning and knowledge Edited by Urszula M. Zeglén 3 Philosophy and Ordinary Language The bent and genius of our tongue Oswald Hanfling 4 The Subject in Question Sartre’s critique of Husserl in The Transcendence of the Ego Stephen Priest 5 Aesthetic Order A philosophy of order, beauty and art Ruth Lorland 6 Naturalism A critical analysis Edited by William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland 7 Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy Richard Gaskin 8 Rules, Magic and Instrumental Reason A critical interpretation of Peter Winch’s philosophy of the social sciences Berel Dov Lerner 9 Gaston Bachelard Critic of science and the imagination Cristina Chimisso 10 Hilary Putnam Pragmatism and realism Edited by James Conant and Urszula Zeglén 11 Karl Jaspers Politics and metaphysics Chris Thornhill 12 From Kant to Davidson The idea of the transcendental in twentieth-century philosophy Edited by Jeff Malpas 13 Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience A reinterpretation Giuseppina D’Oro 14 The Logic of Liberal Rights A study in the formal analysis of legal discourse Eric Heinze 15 Real Metaphysics Edited by Hallvard Lillehammer and Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra 16 Philosophy After Postmodernism Civilized values and the scope of knowledge Paul Crowther 17 Phenomenology and Imagination in Husserl and Heidegger Brian Elliott 18 Laws in Nature Stephen Mumford 19 Trust and Toleration Richard H. Dees 20 The Metaphysics of Perception Wilfrid Sellars, critical realism and the nature of experience Paul Coates 21 Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action Praxeological investigations Roderick T. Long Laws in Nature Stephen Mumford First published 2004 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2004 Stephen Mumford All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mumford, Stephen. Laws in nature / Stephen Mumford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Law (Philosophy) 2. Power (Philosophy) 3. Philosophy of nature. I. Title. B105.L3M86 2004 117–dc22 2004000286 ISBN 0-203-45842-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-34443-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-31128-4 (Print Edition) Contents List of illustrations xi Preface xii Acknowledgements xvi 1 Laws in science and philosophy 1 1.1 Laws and explanations 1 1.2 Apology for metaphysics 4 1.3 Laws in nature 8 1.4 Laws in science 10 1.5 Lawlessness 13 1.6 Overview of the book 15 PART I Humean lawlessness 19 2 The lawless world 21 2.1 Just one little thing and then another 21 2.2 A sceptical duty 22 2.3 Humean lawlessness 23 2.4 Necessity is in the head 24 2.5 Regularities and science 26 2.6 Conjunctions, connections and laws 27 2.7 Humean ‘theories of laws’ 30 3 Regularities and best systems 31 3.1 Regularity and less-than-universal regularity 31 3.2 Irrefutable but unappealing32 3.3 The critique of the regularity theory 35 3.4 The best systems theory 40 3.5 Problems for best systems 45 3.6 Humean supervenience 48 viii Contents 4 Hume’s argument 50 4.1 The Humean view of necessity and laws 50 4.2 The arguments of the Treatise and Enquiry 51 4.3 Was Hume a sceptical realist? 57 4.4 Humean scepticism 61 4.5 Conjunction as evidence of necessity 63 PART II Nomological realism 65 5 The nomological argument 67 5.1 What is nomological realism? 67 5.2 Do we need a nomological argument? 68 5.3 The argument 69 5.4 Without laws, there would be no order 72 5.5 Without laws, there would be nothing74 5.6 Without laws, there would be no science 76 5.7 How compelling is the nomological argument? 77 5.8 Cosmic coincidence 79 5.9 Patterns without laws 81 5.10 A less direct argument for laws? 82 6 Natural necessitation relations 83 6.1 Real laws and their role 83 6.2 The basic DTA theory 85 6.3 Key virtues over the regularity theory 87 6.4 Variants on the DTA theory 89 6.5 Some perceived weaknesses of DTA 92 6.6 Armstrong’s nomological argument 96 6.7 The nomic relation 99 6.8 Instantiation and supervenience 101 6.9 How can Armstrong’s laws govern? 102 6.10 Quidditism 103 7 Necessitarian essentialism 105 7.1 The New Essentialism 105 7.2 The essentialist theory of laws 106 7.3 Natural kinds 110 7.4 Essential properties 113 7.5 The universal accidental 116 7.6 From reference to essence? 118 Contents ix 7.7 From science to essence? 118 7.8 Essentialist laws? 120 7.9 Necessary laws? 122 7.10 Essentialist laws not proved 123 PART III Realist lawlessness 125 8 Are natural laws a natural kind? 127 8.1 Conclusion 127 8.2 The elusive and ineffable nature of laws 128 8.3 Laws as a kind? 130 8.4 Disagreements 132 8.5 The diversity of laws 134 8.6 A family resemblance between laws? 139 8.7 Modernization? 141 9 The Central Dilemma 143 9.1 The Central Dilemma: introduction 143 9.2 The argument: summary formulation 144 9.3 The governing role of laws 145 9.4 The Central Dilemma, first horn: externalized laws 146 9.5 External laws and quidditism 149 9.6 First horn: summary 152 9.7 The Central Dilemma, second horn: internalized laws 153 9.8 Newtonian spirits 156 9.9 Second horn: summary 157 9.10 Full statement and conclusion 158 10 Modal properties 160 10.1 Necessity in nature 160 10.2 Full strength necessity in laws 161 10.3 Contingent natural necessity 163 10.4 De re necessity 166 10.5 Is a power’s necessity merely analytic? 168 10.6 Powerful properties 170 10.7 Shifting potencies 174 10.8 Restricted combinatorialsim 175 10.9 Possible properties 180 10.10 Natural necessity 181 x Contents 11 Objections and replies 182 11.1 Responses 182 11.2 Holism versus discreta 182 11.3 Relativity 185 11.4 Do all properties have a causal essence? 187 11.5 Epiphenomena 188 11.6 How might the account be extended to relations? 190 11.7 Meinongianism 192 11.8 Why is this not a theory of laws? 195 11.9 Why is this theory not subject to the Central Dilemma? 197 11.10 Am I looking for the wrong kind of law? 198 11.11 Can all laws be replaced by powers? 198 11.12 Powers are no better understood than laws 199 12 Conclusion: law and metaphor 201 12.1 Law as metaphor 201 12.2 Law as the wrong metaphor 202 12.3 Law as a harmful metaphor 203 Notes 206 Bibliography 218 Index 225 Illustrations Figures 1.1 The three metaphysics 15 9.1 Lowe’s four-category ontology 154 10.1 Model of restricted combinatorial possibility 176 11.1 Epiphenomenal properties 189 11.2 Epiphenomenal properties somehow directed by laws 189 11.3 Connections between relations 191 Tables 2.1 The three metaphysics contrasted 29 7.1 The leptons 111 7.2 The quarks 111 7.3 The mediators 111 Preface Both philosophers and scientists speak of laws of nature. They quantify over laws and can use the term as a count noun. Hence, they may speak of a law of nature, three laws of motion, the laws of nature (meaning the set of them all), and the laws of thermodynamics (meaning a particular subset of all the laws).