The origin and development of the concept of the ‘laws of nature’

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Milton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
Modern Mind ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

TheIdea of explaining natural phenomena by appealing to laws of nature is one that is thoroughly familiar to the modern mind. This idea does not perhaps appear quite as natural as it did a century ago, when Engels proclaimed to the mourners at Marx's funeral that just as Darwin had discovered the law of development of organic nature so Marx had discovered the law of development of human history. Twentieth-century historians do not in general conceive their task as including the formulation of laws of history, and the discoveries of modern physics since Maxwell have for the most part been expressed in terms of principles and equations rather than laws. Nevertheless, despite these changes, we are still quite accustomed to thinking in terms of laws of nature; and just because it seems natural it is easy to assume that it is natural for human beings seeking to explain the phenomena of nature to do so by enquiring after the laws by which these phenomena are governed.

Guarding the Public Interest: England's Coroners and Organ Transplants, 1960–1975

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 926-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Spare Part ◽  
Organ Transplants ◽  
Legal Requirement ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

AbstractFrom the mid-twentieth century, England's coroners were crucial to the supply of organs to transplant, as much of this material was gleaned from the bodies of people who had been involved in accidents. In such situations the law required that a coroner's consent first be obtained lest removing the organs destroy evidence about the cause of the person's death. Surgeons challenged the legal requirement that they seek consent before taking organs, arguing that doing so hampered their quick access to bodies. Some coroners willingly cooperated with surgeons while others refused to do so, coming into conflict with particular transplanters whom they considered untrustworthy. This article examines how the phenomenon of “spare part” surgery challenged long-held conceptions of the coroner's role.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Drew
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
The Core ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

The fact that a number of aspects of maritime blockade law are not settled in customary law infers that any state that engages in blockade operations risks the possibility that its actions will be found to have been unlawful. Because the consequences of a blockade can be so deleterious to vulnerable civilian populations, it is necessary that a legal framework for maritime blockade be established. At the core of any such framework must be the requirement to address humanitarian issues and concerns. Without such initiatives, the law of blockade will remain mired in the early twentieth century, and states engaging in this method of warfare will do so under a cloud of legal ambiguity.

Reinhold Niebuhr: The law of love and the omnipresence of power

2021 ◽  
pp. 175508822098588
Author(s):  
David Clinton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human History ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Human Need ◽  
The Law ◽  
Realist View

The twentieth-century theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr frequently employed a formulation confounding to his readers, simultaneously appealing to the loftiest altruism as summed up in his identification of the “law of love” and compelling attention to the grittiest realism as encapsulated in his recognition of a universal struggle for power. This sharp contrast was no careless error on Niebuhr’s part, but rather an insistence on describing in the most sharply contrasting tones the paradoxical character of human nature. In his Christian Realist view fear and a consequent desire for power over others to protect oneself are inescapable components of human existence within history. The human need for community and refusal to be satisfied with anything less than devotion to the wellbeing of others unsullied by self-love are nevertheless also implanted in the human heart, which recognizes that reality extends beyond human history. Niebuhr demanded attention to both.

scholarly journals Blood, Blood Everywhere and Not A Drop To Drink: How Jesus’ Blood Fulfills the Law

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Moon
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Human History ◽  
New Covenant ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Mass Effects ◽  
Imminent Death ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Of Moses

Christianity is based in blood, thereby that death can never be forgotten. Blood begins with Genesis to have the dueling significance of life and death. For one’s blood is one’s life, and yet blood is the price for sin. From the very beginning blood poured out represents humanity’s imminent death brought even closer by the onslaught of sin and its weariless pursuit of life. Until Christ fulfills his new covenant, the exchange of blood for blood is endless and the death that permeates blood prevails over life. In this essay, I will analyze how Jesus’ blood fulfills the Law and frees humanity from sin and death. First, I will see how blood is understood and portrayed in the covenant of Noah, then the covenant of Abraham, and finally in the Law of Moses, so that the fullness of what it means for God to pour out His blood and die, so humanity may ultimately live and not be forever separated from Him can be fully known. This will also further unpack and clarify what the practice of communion and activity of the mass effects in human beings according to piece of human history it fulfills, forever partakes, and from which it came into being. 

‘Wheels have been set in motion’: Geocentrism and Relativity in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliane Campos
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Quantum Uncertainty ◽  
Galilean Relativity ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
20Th Century Physics ◽  
Time Specific ◽  
Do So

By decentring our reading of Hamlet, Stoppard’s tragicomedy questions the legitimacy of centres and of stable frames of reference. So Liliane Campos examines how Stoppard plays with the physical and cosmological models he finds in Hamlet, particularly those of the wheel and the compass, and gives a new scientific depth to the fear that time is ‘out of joint’. In both his play and his own film adaptation, Stoppard’s rewriting gives a 20th-century twist to these metaphors, through references to relativity, indeterminacy, and the role of the observer. When they refer to the uncontrollable wheels of their fate, his characters no longer describe the destruction of order, but uncertainty about which order is at work, whether heliocentric or geocentric, random or tragic. When they express their loss of bearings, they do so through the thought experiments of modern physics, from Galilean relativity to quantum uncertainty, drawing our attention to shifting frames of reference. Much like Schrödinger’s cat, Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are both dead and alive. As we observe their predicament, Campos argues, we are placed in the paradoxical position of the observer in 20th-century physics, and constantly reminded that our time-specific relation to the canon inevitably determines our interpretation.

The Samarin Family and the Parish Question in the Russian Empire. 1860s–1910s

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 235-246
Author(s):  
Alexey L. Beglov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Life ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The article examines the contribution of the representatives of the Samarin family to the development of the Parish issue in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The issue of expanding the rights of the laity in the sphere of parish self-government was one of the most debated problems of Church life in that period. The public discussion was initiated by D.F. Samarin (1827-1901). He formulated the “social concept” of the parish and parish reform, based on Slavophile views on society and the Church. In the beginning of the twentieth century his eldest son F.D. Samarin who was a member of the Special Council on the development the Orthodox parish project in 1907, and as such developed the Slavophile concept of the parish. In 1915, A.D. Samarin, who took up the position of the Chief Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, tried to make his contribution to the cause of the parish reforms, but he failed to do so due to his resignation.

On the Artifactual—and Natural— Character of Legal Institutions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corrado Roversi
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Theory Of Law

Are legal institutions artifacts? If artifacts are conceived as entities whose existence depends on human beings, then yes, legal institutions are, of course, artifacts. But an artifact theory of law makes a stronger claim, namely, that there is actually an explanatory gain to be had by investigating legal institutions as artifacts, or through the features of ordinary artifacts. This is the proposition explored in this chapter: that while this understanding of legal institutions makes it possible to find common ground between legal positivism and legal realism, it does not capture all of the insights offered by these two traditions. An artifact theory of law can therefore be necessary in explaining the law, but it will not suffice to that end. This chapter also posits that legal artifacts bear a relevant connection to certain conceptions of nature, thus vindicating one of the original insights behind natural law theory.

A solution of the time paradox of physics

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Grit Kalies
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Quantum Level ◽  
Energy Equivalence ◽  
Time Arrow ◽  
Laws Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Time Concepts ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The One ◽  
Matter Energy

AbstractQuantum mechanics for describing the behavior of microscopic entities and thermodynamics for describing macroscopic systems exhibit separate time concepts. Whereas many theories of modern physics interpret processes as reversible, in thermodynamics, an expression for irreversibility and the so-called time arrow has been developed: the increase of entropy. The divergence between complete reversibility on the one hand and irreversibility on the other is called the paradox of time. Since more than hundred years many efforts have been devoted to unify the time concepts. So far, the efforts were not successful. In this paper a solution is proposed on the basis of matter-energy equivalence with an energetic distinction between matter and mass. By refraining from interpretations predominant in modern theoretical physics, the first and second laws of thermodynamics can be extended to fundamental laws of nature, which are also valid at quantum level.

Kant on the Ground of Human Dignity

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Apaar Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Human Constitution ◽  
The Law

Abstract Kant interpreters have contrasting views on what Kant takes to be the basis for human dignity. Several commentators have argued that human dignity can be traced back to some feature of human beings. Others contend that humans in themselves lack dignity, but dignity can be attributed to them because the moral law demands respect for humanity. I argue, alternatively, that human dignity in Kant’s system can be seen to be grounded in the reciprocal relationship between the dignity of the moral law and the dignity inherent in the human constitution. The latter includes the dignity of personhood, construed as rational inner purposiveness, and the dignity of giving oneself the law and striving to follow it.

Line Drawing in the Dark

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Adam J. Kolber
Keyword(s):  
Line Drawing ◽  
The Law ◽  
Do So

Abstract The law inevitably draws lines. These lines distinguish, for example, whether certain conduct reflects ordinary recklessness constituting manslaughter or more extreme recklessness constituting murder. There is no way to meaningfully draw such lines, however, absent shared ways of representing amounts of recklessness or at least knowledge of the consequences of drawing lines in particular places. Yet legal actors frequently draw lines in the dark, establishing cutoffs along a spectrum with little or none of the information required to do so in a way that suits the law’s goals. For example, jurors must decide whether some conduct constitutes extreme recklessness without knowing prior precedent nor the sentencing consequences of drawing cutoffs in particular places. Judges and lawyers cite line drawing precedents from other jurisdictions without considering whether the lines drawn in prior cases had the same consequences as those in the case at bar. And scholars argue about how to classify conduct without making clear what consequences they believe ought to attach once the classification is made, leaving it hard to tell when scholars have substantive or simply superficial disagreements. In this Article, I discuss some line drawing problems and briefly suggest ways we can add meaning to cutoffs. More generally, I argue, we can “smooth” certain features of the law to both reduce our vulnerability to line drawing in the dark and improve the fit between the law and what our best theories of law recommend. Even when we cannot easily smooth the law, thinking about the law in a smoother fashion can help reduce the jurisprudential pathologies I describe.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document