Rethinking Order: After the Laws of Nature

Nancy Cartwright · Keith Ward

iyn, 2016 · Bloomsbury Publishing

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This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse, piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined.

In each chapter expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws of nature, and explore the diverse sorts of order actually presupposed by work in physics, biology, and the social sciences. They consider how human freedom might be understood, and explore how Newton's idea of a 'universal designer' might be revised, in this new context.

They argue that there is not one unified totalizing program of science, aiming at the completion of one closed causal system. We live in an ordered universe, but we need to rethink the classical idea of the 'laws of nature' in a more dynamic and creatively diverse way.

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Nancy Cartwright is Professor of Philosophy both at the University of Durham, UK and the University of California, San Diego, USA. She is former president of the Philosophy of Science Association, a MacArthur fellow and Fellow of the British Academy. She has authored several books, including Hunting Causes and Using Them (2007), and Philosophy of Social Science: A New Introduction, with Eleonora Montuschi (2014).

Keith Ward is a Professorial Fellow at Heythrop College, UK. He was ordained Priest of the Church of England in 1972. He has published numerous books, including Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (1984) and Comparative Theology in 5 volumes (1994-2000 and 2008).