Science

Are all of the laws of nature or of the universe such as the law of gravity necessary or contingent? If contingent, and found in one instance to be false, would they fail to be laws? Thanks, John

Comments

Yes, and no.

If there are exceptions to the law of gravity (whatever that might be), then it is not a law. Fundamental physical laws are supposed to be exceptionless. (I put the point that way because many philosophers hold that the laws of non-basic sciences, such as biology or even chemistry, can have exceptions. But this is a different, and very tangled, issue.)

However, the fact that the law of gravity (if it is really a law) cannot have exceptions does not imply that it is necessary. To say that the law is necessary is to say that it could not have been otherwise. Or, to use a popular metaphor, it's contingent if there is another "possible universe" in which the laws are, in fact, different, so that the law of gravity, as it is in this universe, does not hold there. The mere fact that the law holds without exception in this universe does not obviously imply that the laws might not have been otherwise. Some philosophers do think that the laws could not have been otherwise. But the relevant point for our purposes is just that this is a different issue than whether the law has exceptions.

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