Physical Law - Laws As Definitions

Laws As Definitions

Some "scientific laws" appear to be mathematical definitions (e.g., Newton's Second law F = dp⁄dt, or the uncertainty principle, or the principle of least action, or causality). While these "scientific laws" explain what our senses perceive, they are still empirical and, thus, they are not "mathematical" facts. (Reference to a "law" often suggests a "fact", although "facts" do not exist scientifically a priori.)

Read more about this topic:  Physical Law

Famous quotes containing the words laws and/or definitions:

    What comes over a man, is it soul or mind
    That to no limits and bounds he can stay confined?
    You would say his ambition was to extend the reach
    Clear to the Arctic of every living kind.
    Why is his nature forever so hard to teach
    That though there is no fixed line between wrong and right,
    There are roughly zones whose laws must be obeyed?
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    Lord Byron is an exceedingly interesting person, and as such is it not to be regretted that he is a slave to the vilest and most vulgar prejudices, and as mad as the winds?
    There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what the untrained eyes consider abominable.
    Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)