Está en la página 1de 4

Any question of the contingency or necessity of natural laws depends first upon

the question “what is a law of nature?” In the two chapters of Whitehead we’ve
been reading Whitehead suggests four possible answers which I find useful for
examining a broad range of metaphysical approaches. I’m going to try and
discuss Alexander Bird’s approach to these questions also.

A simple answer to the question “what is a law of nature?” is that a law


describes some order, stability, regularity or repetition. The schema in which
any such description plays a role will depend upon the metaphysics it
articulates. Whitehead’s four doctrines of the law are immanent law, imposed
law, order of succession or mere description, and conventional understanding.
I’m not going to deal with conventional understanding (It’s basically an anti-
realist/Kuhnian attitude to our limited and ever-changing understanding of
nature. It suggests that all our theories about the laws of nature are simply
stories that fit best for the time being. The value of this doctrine however is to
recognise that our understanding of science and nature does change, old theories
will be left behind and new sciences begun).
The doctrine of the law as imposed is probably the easiest to explain and the
least contentious. Classical mechanical materialism (such as Newton or
Descartes’) is exemplary of imposed law. Nature is composed of independently
existing things. These entities are without any inherent principle of organisation
however and this, combined with the fact that they do come into relation with
each other, means that some order is imposed upon them. Gravity for Newton,
res cogitans or God (who is most likely responsible for gravity anyway) for
Descartes, the imposed law determining the powers, movements and
organisation of the bare things of nature is of an entirely different kind than
them.

Whitehead argues that imposed law will be deterministic: “what God meant he
did. When he said let there be light, there was light and not a mere imitation or
a statistical average” (AoI, 145). The order and exactness of imposed law are its
prime advantages, particularly in promoting research towards knowledge of such
laws. They are determinate, God in his wisdom has chosen them and it is for us
to learn the greatness (and determinist dualism) of God.

I’m not sure if anyone would defend such a Deist understanding of the laws of
nature nowadays. If anyone were to hold to such a system I would argue that it
is likely also that imposed law will be necessary. Bird argues in his book that
the brute identity of natural law in certain theories makes them contingent
since the only proof of their identity is that they have that identity in this
possible world. [It’s just occurred to me that Bird’s understanding of necessary
is a trans-world proof; something is necessary if it is true in this and all other
possible worlds. Analytic philosophy takes some getting used to.] The possible
worlds variance of laws of nature will make little difference to Deist imposed
law since any monist theology will want to argue that God is God across all
possible worlds (if there are any) and that the laws of nature are specified by
Him to be as they are across all these worlds. If the laws vary from world to
world then God is capricious, which is not something most theists would want.
Alternatively He is not all-knowing, since a multitude of worlds with different
laws suggests experiments. Finally the many possible worlds beyond this one
might be expressions of God’s many properties and to deny them real existence
would be to limit God, in which case the laws of nature are contingent since
they vary depending on which of God’s worlds we’re in, or they’re necessary
since some aspects of God are the same wherever you are (his omnipotence
etc.). I guess Spinoza and Leibniz would be the place to look for these kinds of
ideas but it’s not really relevant here.

The doctrine of the law as observed order of succession or mere description is a


positivist doctrine denying any metaphysical laws but describing the regularity
that is manifest in nature. If we consider the laws of nature as following from
causal relations in nature then we can consider this doctrine as following from
Hume. Although Hume doesn’t deny the existence of causal relations this
doctrine easily follows from a neo-Humean standpoint; we can’t know cause,
only the constant conjunction. Our work then is simply to observe and describe
this regularity.

Whitehead argues that the positivist method of observation and description is


central to science. He describes Newton’s observations of the orbit of the
planets and the sun. However he is critical of the limits of this doctrine. Beyond
the observation of regularity of sequence there must be some speculation if our
understanding is to develop, and speculation implies some trust in metaphysics.
Without the expansion of ideas to greater generality and their speculative
application progress would stall:
Suppose that a hundred thousand years ago our ancestors had been wise
positivists. They sought for no reasons. What they observed was sheer
matter of fact. It was the development of no necessity. They would have
searched for no reasons underlying facts immediately observed.
Civilisation would never have developed. (Whitehead, 1938, 148-9)
It seems likely that there are those who would argue against Whitehead
regarding his antipathy towards mere description. Certainly his description of
the doctrine is of a very limited type. Elsewhere in his writing he has some
pretty acerbic things to say about the positivists who were his contemporaries.

The doctrine of the law as immanent is like imposed law a realist conception of
nature which however denies the independence of entities and instead posits a
system of relations whose organisation is exemplary of the laws. It could be
described as a powers ontology since every thing plays an effective role.
Whitehead quotes Plato’s definition of Being as power [would you be able to
find and put together the different translations of this that you mentioned
Zach?].

In chapter VII Whitehead does very little description of immanent law and
jumps straight to the consequences of such a conception of the law (AoI, 143):
1. “[S]cientists are seeking for explanations and not merely simplified
descriptions of their observations”. Immanent law is realist, non-
reductive and explanatory.
2. “[E]xact conformation of nature to any law is not to be expected”. Since
the order of the system is itself expressive of the laws (the law is not
imposed) variations between states of affairs will equal variations in their
outcomes. Which also lead onto the next point…
3. The laws of nature are contingent. Immanent law is descriptive of a
prevailing order in any system, if the order of this system changes then
the laws too will change.
4. We can have some trust in induction. Systems of immanent power about
which we have some knowledge of the law will be ordered systems, and
so it is probable that their evolution will be ordered and regular.
5. “[T]he doctrine of immanent law is untenable unless we can construct a
plausible metaphysical doctrine according to which the characters of the
relevant things are the outcome of their interconnections, and their
interconnections are the outcome of their characters”. This is perhaps the
most interesting point and I’ll come back to it.
6. The doctrine of immanent law is rationalist, it “is explanatory of the
possibility of understanding nature”.

Zach asked about the relation of law as mere description and immanent law and
I think that this is interesting. In the doctrine of the law as immanent which
Whitehead describes it is the organisation of the system which exemplifies the
laws of that system. So in fact any immanent law depends on the same
regularity as a law of mere description. The most important difference between
them (as they are described by Whitehead) would be that a system of
immanent would claim to make realist metaphysical statements regarding the
laws which can be generalised to other instances. A law of mere description
makes no such claim to a realist metaphysics and the generalisation of laws
beyond their particular instances will be forbidden. The boundaries between
these doctrines is fluid however since it seems likely that any positivist science
will in fact generalise beyond its observations of particular instances.

A further interesting parallel between immanent law as Whitehead describes it


and mere description comes from the regularity on which both draw their
inferences. In the introduction to Nature’s Metaphysics, Bird criticises David
Lewis’s neo-Humean doctrine of law from regularity. From Bird’s description
Lewis’s regularity sounds very much like the doctrine of the law as observed
order of succession as described by Whitehead. Bird makes one criticism in
particular of Lewis’s regularity that:
Laws depend on the pattern of their instances and other matters of
particular fact […]. This seems to get the relationship between laws and
matters of fact the wrong way round. It is laws that direct or explain
particular matters of fact, not vice versa.
This criticism could just as well be levelled at Whitehead’s doctrine of
immanent law (especially confer 5. above).

I think that Whitehead’s reply would be that laws which “direct or explain
particular matters of fact, not vice versa” are not really immanent laws. The
doctrine of the law as immanent is a description of Whitehead’s own
metaphysics (and probably in part those philosophers he considers to be his
allies; Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz…). The ultimate law of nature in Whitehead is
creativity, the power of transformation active in all things. Creativity is a non-
determining process from multiple facts (the prior state of the universe) to the
novel individual facts of a new moment. Laws of nature such as “the force of
attraction between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses
and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them” are
more abstract or particular statements of fact. I’m thinking through this still
but what is most fundamental about nature for Whitehead is the
transformation for occasion to occasion, the transference of aesthetic or
emotional interest and the repetition or divergence from inherited patterns.
Immanent law for Whitehead is a nondescript power inherent in all things
which isn’t really much of a law…

Imagining that Whitehead were to tell Bird that laws which “direct or explain
particular matters of fact, not vice versa” are not really immanent laws, he
would probably also take up Bird’s Platonism. While Whitehead is no doubt a
Platonist he’s a bit of a weird one. His ontological principle, that it is only in
relation to the becoming of actually existing things (actual occasions) that
anything has any relevance, makes any Platonic realm a sort of immanent field
to actuality instead of a higher or separate realm. Whether Whitehead sticks to
his ontological principle is questionable, but he does try. Bird on the other hand
is explicit in his understanding of universals as existing apart from any
particular instantiation.

Bird’s understanding of a law is also very different from Whitehead’s. Bird’s


dispositional properties are immanent powers and so they could come under a
description of immanent law, but not the one Whitehead gives. Whereas
Whitehead’s laws involve multiple entities and may manifest multiple
outcomes, Bird is much more interested in “pure” properties that have one
entity, one stimulus and one outcome. I’m quite confused by what Bird’s
approach to indeterminism might be. He seems to suggest that for every
possible variable an entity will hold different dispositions. Anyway, Bird’s laws
are of the type “x is disposed to manifest M when stimulus S”. That the law is
specific, i.e. conditional, is the reason that Bird argues that the laws are
necessary. The disposition of “x to M when S” will be the same in every
possible world, and under every circumstance, because it is dependent on the
fulfilment of specific conditions. In some situation these conditions may not be
fulfilled, but it will still be a disposition.

También podría gustarte