Laws and Symmetry

by Bas C. Van Fraassen

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 wemust 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Physics, Nonfiction

410 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 1989

About the author

Bastiaan Cornelis van Fraassen is a Dutch-American philosopher noted for his seminal contributions to philosophy of science. He is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and the McCosh Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Brian Beakley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book, the likes of which would take me at least 5 lifetimes to write.

[B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hate when my cube factory produces cubes that lack parametrisation-invariant probability distributions