Laws and Symmetry

Front Cover
Clarendon Press, 1989 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 395 pages
Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists, in terms of symmetry and invariance. In this book van Fraassen argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. He analyzes and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe there are, and argues that we should disregard the idea of law as an inadequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the author develops the empiricist view of science as a construction of models to represent the phenomena.

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
1
The end of metaphysics?
7
What Are Laws of Nature?
17
Copyright

60 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information