Calling natural principles “laws” seems to imply that someone promulgates and enforces them them rather than that they just happen. Do all languages and cultures call them “laws?” When did this usage of “law” start? Was the term used because everyone at the beginning of the scientific revolution was a Deist of some kind, or because it was dangerous not to be? Would it carry less connotation of a Deity to call it the “Second Principle of Thermodynamics” or the “Principle of Gravity,” for examples?
(I tried searching for answers to the above but was unable to formulate a query that returned anything specific.)
I suppose the origins of it refer to the ostensibly Deist principles of the scientists of the 17th Century and onward, who would consider that God did indeed ‘enforce’ these laws. Moreover I would conjecture that the word ‘law’ is highly appropriate as it indicates that everything is affected and bound by that phenomenon - nobody can declare themselves exempt from it. Being a ‘principle’ sounds like guidelines.
I have some sympathy with the OP - one of the standard Christian apologetics tropes is that “if there is a law, there must be a law-giver.” This, to me, is equivocation, confusing the legal definition of a law with the natrual law meaning. A natural law is not something handed down and enforced, it’s simply an observation about behavior.
The word “principle” derives from the Latin word princeps, which was commonly used to refer to leaders/sovereigns. “rule” is also problematic, as it can equally be said to imply a “ruler”
While I too sympathize with the OP’s fear that “law” implies “lawgiver”, I’ve found it’s much easier to simple educate people about the difference in use rather than attempt the futile task of sanitizing the language.
Indeed, any attempt to invent a popular new term would be co-opted and thus eventually diluted by the general population, with people eventually complaining “why do you trust the Shibutie of Evolution so much, after all , it’s just a Shibutie”.
Thirded. There are some words out there that might fit the bill, but the public has a disgusting love for solipsism at the moment and will just start using the terms incorrectly.
My guess is that they were originally called “laws” because they seemed so arbitrary - they had no reason to exist, but did. As far as they could tell, they were prescriptive, rather than descriptive. Whether or not someone or something actually “set” them, the closest thing they resembled was laws issued by a king or god.
I appreciate all the above. I thought I might have read some dissertation (not necessarily academic) on this, or that it might be an exhausted discussion that I just couldn’t find, of dead philosophers, but apparently not, at least so far. “Principle’s” difficulties are indeed somewhat the same as “law.” I take it no one knows of a culture or language that has handled this differently.
The reason is that “law” is shorter than “fact of the universe” or “a universal given”. It’s simply a way to describe those things in the natural world that can be predicted with 100% certainty. Now, I guess that “law” could imply a law-giver, but I never thought of, for instance, the laws of physics, that way.
Granted the law-giver gets closer to the equation when talking about philosophy and natural law theory. But again, it seems like a bit of shoehorning, attempting to make the ways of the universe comport with that which we are more familiar. And willfully ignores the massive difference between our laws and the larger picture. OUr laws are written by men, and can change tomorrow. The natural laws are viewed to be those that are both universal and timeless—as far as civilized peoples go.
I’m find it interesting that it is often the case that those who are the least embracing of a Creator God might be the same people who are the quickest to see him where he really isn’t.
I have no idea where you might be getting this from-what is being described here is the very real problem of certain religionists misusing the scientific terminology “Law” to shoehorn their “Law-Giver” into the conversation.
While your premise is understandable, I think it’s also kind of pointless. Words can have multiple meanings and usually do. It wouldn’t surprise me if, historically speaking, the laws of physics & such were called such because it was believed that God or gods enacted and enforced them, and though that is not now the current view, the word law has expanded to include the current meaning.
Doesn’t bother me much. Theory doesn’t mean the same thing in technical parlance as it does in common; that one bugs me more.
I don’t see where. I see a fear of that happening by a few in this thread. The, for instance, Laws of Motion are based on science/observation. I’ve yet to hear anyone argue that, well, since an object in motion stays in motion, there is a god. In fact, MY God!!" Can you point me to people making an argument like that?
I’m also a bit tickled that you chose to respond to the aside I made in my post, and nothing else I mentioned.
I seem to recall C.S. Lewis making such an argument in one of his Christian apologetics; it was either Miracles or The Problem with Pain. As Lewis made no claim to being original in his theology, I am sure others asserted that before him, and as Lewis is quite popular among Protestant Christians, I’m sure it’s been made since. I’ve heard Pentecostal ministers claiming it.
Gee whiz, sometimes we Dopers get all philosophical and technical at the same time, when it’s easier to just accept the simple, straightforward answer:
A law is something that has to be obeyed.
If you disobey it, you’re gonna be sorry.
Example: the law of gravity.
Roadrunner obeys the law when it runs towards a cliff, and stops at the edge.
Wile E. Coyote , not so much.
See? It’s a law.
And you don’t even need to a cop to enforce it.
To the best of my recollection, that argument goes more to intelligent design and has little or nothing to do with the fact that we refer to certain operations in the universe as “laws”. Am I misremembering things?
You are confused as to what the law of gravity is. it is not “do not step off cliffs”; that is prescriptive. In general it is that objects with mass attract one another, and in the specific instance you mention, it is that a body within the area of Earth’s dominant gravitational field will travel toward the surface of the earth with an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared, and thus will fall unless a greater force (say the structural integrity of the table my computer is sitting on) intervenes. Airplanes are not defying the law of gravity by flying, and a man who jumps off a cliff is not attempting to defy it and failing; in both cases they are “acting” in accordance with the law of gravity, which is a description of what happens.