Lichtenstein, Eli I. (2022) Revaluing Laws of Nature in Secularized Science. Yemima Ben-Menahem (ed.), Rethinking the Concept of Law of Nature. pp. 347-377.
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Abstract
Discovering laws of nature was a way to worship a law-giving God, during the Scientific Revolution. So why should we consider it worthwhile now, in our own more secularized science? For historical perspective, I examine two competing early modern theological traditions that related laws of nature to different divine attributes, and their secular legacy in views ranging from Kant and Nietzsche to Humean and ‘governing’ accounts in recent analytic metaphysics. Tracing these branching offshoots of ethically charged God-concepts sheds light on how our ethical ideals and ideas of natural order can still be valuably integrated. Early modern intellectualists valued the law-governed order of nature as a sign of divine Reason. In turn, Reason traditionally ascribed to God has now been partly reclaimed for humans, reframing the value of natural order anthropocentrically, in terms of the value of our own intelligence. Alternatively, Reason may be reclaimed for nature itself, as in an ‘objective’ idealism or metaphysical rationalism. However, beyond divine Reason, an influential voluntarist tradition in theology stressed a connection between laws of nature and God’s Power or free Will. Tracking how divine Power has been reinvested in human beings provides a broader context for instrumentalism and related lineages of empiricism. But secularization can also transfer Power from God to the impersonal natural world. In this light, current scientific interest in lawlike order may also reflect the inherent value of brute necessity or inhuman causal power in nature: this is a deeper way to reject anthropocentrism and to show our respect for the environment.
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| Item Type: | Published Article or Volume | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Secularization, Values in science, Science and religion, Scientific Revolution, Anthropocentrism, Ecocentrism, Environmental value, Theology, Nature and God, Intellectualism, Rationalism, Idealism, Voluntarism, Governing, Humeanism, Causation, Necessity, Contingency, Laws of Nature, Natural Order, Simplicity | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Science and Religion General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Depositing User: | Eli I. Lichtenstein | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2022 13:04 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 21 Jun 2022 13:04 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 20768 | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Yemima Ben-Menahem (ed.), Rethinking the Concept of Law of Nature | ||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | ||||||
| Official URL: | https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-03... | ||||||
| DOI or Unique Handle: | 10.1007/978-3-030-96775-8_13 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics General Issues > Laws of Nature General Issues > Science and Religion General Issues > Values In Science |
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| Date: | 14 June 2022 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 347-377 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/20768 |
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