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Tallis in Wonderland

‘The Laws of Nature’

Raymond Tallis gazes into the gap between nature’s habits and the laws of science.

A little while back I touched on the ‘laws of nature’ in the course of a defence of free will (‘The Mystery of Freedom’, Issue 140). I argued that if we were entirely subject to such laws, then neither the experimental science by which they were discovered nor our capacity to exploit them through technology would be possible.

Our undeniable ability to manipulate states of matter inside scientific laboratories in pursuit of knowledge of its general properties, and to apply that knowledge outside of the laboratories in support of our agency, are perhaps the most striking expressions of the way in which we humans transcend the material world. But ‘the laws of nature’ (so-called) deserve more attention than I gave them in that piece on free will.

Horses and Riders

Let’s begin with the common notion that the laws of nature have regulative powers.

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