In previous Episodes, I have made many references to the laws of nature. Laws of nature are the regularities in the natural world, which exist independently of our knowledge of them. But in the textbooks of science you find many equations which encode the natural regularities. These equations are the laws of science. The laws of science are only approximately true because the employment of mathematics involves the use of abstractions and idealisations. The laws of science are subject to modifications, but the laws of nature just are. I limit myself to two philosophical attempts to explain what the natural laws tell us about the natural world: the regularity view and the structural view.

Literature:

The material of this episode draws on my Introduction to the volume Laws of Nature , edited and introduced by Friedel Weinert (1995).