(April 24, 2015 at 10:33 am)Stimbo Wrote: The dreadful misinterpretation of natural, physical laws into a legal sense requiring a lawgiver is as idiotic as saying that bolts tying together structural supports cannot be fastened by nuts, because I cannot eat them.
That is actually my point. The history of science starts with the presumption that the world is intelligibly ordered. Using the term 'laws' to describe the immutable relationship between efficient causes and their effects was an intentional reference to a Divine Lawgiver. Rupert Sheldrake suggests, and I agree, that it would be more accurate to describe empirically observed relationships as habits, dispositions, or correspondences.