Models: The Blueprints for Laws | Zendy

Nancy Cartwright | Zendy

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Models: The Blueprints for Laws

Author(s) -

Nancy Cartwright

Publication year - 1997

Publication title -

philosophy of science

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 1.04

H-Index - 70

eISSN - 1539-767X

pISSN - 0031-8248

DOI - 10.1086/392608

Subject(s) - blueprint , physical law , scientific law , probabilistic logic , law , natural law , computer science , mathematical economics , law and economics , epistemology , mathematics , economics , political science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , engineering , mechanical engineering

In this paper the claim that laws of nature are to be understood as claims about what necessarily or reliably happens is disputed. Laws can characterize what happens in a reliable way, but they do not do this easily. We do not have laws for everything occurring in the world, but only for those situations where what happens in nature is represented by a model: models are blueprints for nomological machines, which in turn give rise to laws. An example from economics shows, in particular, how we use--and how we need to use--models to get probabilistic laws

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