What is a Law of Nature? | Prof. Edward Feser

The Thomistic Institute

Thomism, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Catholic, Philosophy, Catholicism

4.8 • 873 Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2019

⏱️ 93 minutes

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Summary

This talk was delivered at Stanford University on April 17, 2019. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1

Speaker bio:

Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an M.A. in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a B.A. in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for that very kind introduction, and I want to thank you for coming.
0:04.8	Somebody mentioned me earlier that a few people thought that, given the title of the talk,
0:09.1	which is what is a law of nature, but I'd be talking about natural law tonight,
0:12.2	the sense of natural law ethics, and so I hope no one regards it as false advertising.
0:17.4	That's not exactly my talk.
0:19.3	It's on what are laws of nature, as in laws of
0:22.1	physics, laws of chemistry, and so forth. So anyone's disappointed if you want to just slink out
0:26.2	the back corner of this guy, I won't defend it. Hopefully I won't lose my audience if having said that.
0:31.0	Okay, so somewhat different topic, though it's not completely unrelated and perhaps not
0:37.1	completely unrelated in
0:38.1	ways that leverage you to touch upon tonight. There was a hand that I prepared for the talk,
0:42.9	which I think it looks like most people have a copy of. If there are any left, if anybody doesn't,
0:48.5	maybe someone could hand you one. But just a little roadmap to what we're going to be talking
0:53.2	about tonight. So let me get into the talk.
0:56.7	And this, by the way, I guess you could see this kind of an advertisement for the book that was mentioned a moment ago, Aristotle's Revenge, the metaphysical foundations of physical and biological science, because it deals with one of many issues that I get into in that book.
1:11.5	And one of the more foundational issues in the era of what's called philosophy of science, as well as philosophy
1:16.0	of nature.
1:17.7	So let me get into the talk then.
1:21.2	The notion of a physical law is perhaps the central concept of modern science.
1:27.8	In their book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Blodinnell,
1:31.9	characterized the history of science as, quote,
1:33.9	the long process of replacing the notion of the reign of gods
	...

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