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Book. Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of Brian Ellis's 2002 book, The Philosophy of Nature, a Guide to the New

Essentialism.

We left off discussing necessity and possibility, and I think we could finish up that discussion and then touch on the problems

of idealization and then the ontological problem if we want to wrap that up before we get into implications.

So the idea is that essentialism helps us explain the necessity of the laws of nature

by way of natural kinds and essential properties.

It's just by the nature of things, because they are that way,

that the laws have to be what they are, and it leads to some very counterintuitive ideas like for instance

that there's the strong necessity in the sense that a law of nature if it's true and if it's a law in this world, it must be true in all possible

worlds.

Am I characterizing that right?

And if I am, are people satisfied with that or does that seem fishy?

The only qualification you have to make is for all possible worlds that are like our world.

Yes, we could imagine another world with a different ontology, including different kinds of matter

with different natures, different dispositions and causal powers. including different

dispositions and causal powers.

Let me just make sure that we're saying the right thing,

just because I think I get what you're saying,

but so just metaphysical necessity in this sense is the universe is set up with natural kind structure and all possible worlds would have this structure.

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