On the Metaphysical Contingency of Laws of Nature

Abstract

Abstract In the old days—good or bad, depending on your views—it would have been very hard to propose that the laws of nature are necessary’in the strongest sense’ and be taken seriously.1 After all, what the laws of nature are is a matter for empirical investigation, and however they turn out, we can imagine them having been otherwise. When scientists look for laws, there are various hypotheses as to what the laws might be, and so long as there is no hidden contradiction, any of these is conceivable, and so represents what the laws are in some (set of) possible world(s). Certainly, the laws of nature may represent, or underlie, weaker sorts of necessity-physical, biological, psychological, or economic necessity-but such necessity would be understood as being compatible with contingency in a wider sense. Maybe, as things are, this unsupported cup has to fall-but surely the laws could have differed so that under the very same conditions, it would not fall. We can surely imagine it, and in the old days, this would have been enough.

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