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Laws and Lawmakers: Science, Metaphysics, and the Laws of Nature

by Marc Lange

Laws of nature have long puzzled philosophers. What distinguishes laws from facts about the world that do not rise to the level of laws? How can laws be contingent and nevertheless necessary? In this brief, accessible study, Lange offers provocative and original answers to these questions. He argues that laws are distinguished by their necessity, which is grounded in primitive subjunctive facts (expressed by counterfactual conditionals). While recognizing that natural necessity is distinct from logical, metaphysical, and mathematical necessity, Lange explains how natural necessity constitutes a species of the same genus as those other varieties of necessity.

Review for Laws and Lawmakers

Lange writes with restrained elegance, but this does not disguise the fact that his book is in many places hard intellectual work. That reflects the fact that this is a work of the highest intellectual caliber, not unlike important advances in mathematics, that happens to deal with difficult material. It is to Lange’s credit both that his cleverness produced such ideas and that he makes it as easy as he can for the reader to follow them. The reader’s effort will be amply repaid.

• Alexander Bird in The Philosophical Review (2014)