Rethinking Order

After the Laws of Nature

Nancy Cartwright, Keith Ward, Nancy Cartwright, Keith Ward

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781350089891
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474244053
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

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 The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'.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.

Table of contents

• FC
• Half title
• Also Available from Bloomsbury
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Introduction Keith Ward
• Part 1 The Historical and Philosophical Setting
• 1 The Rise and Fall of Laws of Nature Eric Watkins
• 2 The Dethronement of Laws in Science Nancy Cartwright
• Part 2 New Modes of Order in the Natural and Social Sciences
• 3 From Order to Chaos and Back Again Robert C. Bishop and Roman Frigg
• 4 Multiple Orders in Biology Eric Martin and William Bechtel
• 5 Realism, Pluralism and Naturalism in Biology John Dupré
• 6 The Making and Maintenance of Social Order Eleonora Montuschi and Rom Harré
• Part 3 Free Will after the Laws of Nature
• 7 Freedom and the Causal Order T. J. Mawson
• 8 From Laws to Powers Steven Horst
• Part 4 Divine Order
• 9 Order in the Relations between Religion and Science? Reflections on the NOMA Principle of Stephen J. Gould John Hedley Brooke
• 10 Concepts of God and the Order of Nature Keith Ward
• 11 From Order to God Russell ReManning
• Conclusion Nancy Cartwright
• Index