All,
Some of us got into a minor dustup on this topic over coffee and I was led to find this article which, while disagreeing with almost EVERYTHING I said during the dustup, is all the same very interesting ... if one is interested in this sort of thing.
http://gap-im-netz.de/gap4Konf/Proceedings4/pdf/7%20WT10%20Nordmann.pdf
Nordman shows that as people usually use it, law talk collapses into generalization talk without residue. But he promises (in a different article, would you believe) to tell us a way of thinking of laws that make them different from 'just' real good generalizations.
It was this latter view that I was trying to represent. Laws do more than say what we know; they say things we dont know and sometimes, things we could never know. There is something ARROGANT about a law. a law reaches out and grabs the universe by the .... uh ... scruff of the neck. Laws tell us how the universe SHOULD be or how it REALLY IS despite appearances. They tell us about the causal structure of the universe.
Here is a slide from a site that expresses one feature of that view..;.
"Laws have Modal Force
Paulis exclusion principle requires that two fermions
occupy different quantum states
the special theory of relativity does not allow a signal
to be propagated at a velocity exceeding that of light.
The laws of thermodynamics show the Impossibility of
perpetual motion machines
Conservation laws tell us that such quantities as
angular momentum, mass-energy, and charge cannot
be created or destroyed"
If you want to see the whole text of the lecture, go to
http://www.ou.edu/ouphil/faculty/chris/philsci/lawsslides.pdf
Finally, if you want to be convinced that Philosophers actually DO earn their keep and are not the louts they appear to be, have a look at
http://users.ox.ac.uk / ~sfop0117 / Robert%20Bishop,%20Oxfor / Oxford%20Phil%20Sci%203%...
Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/[hidden email]
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