Natural science got its paradigm of natural laws in metaphor from jurisprudence, obviously

"The concept of physical _law_, as it is used in modern natural science, does not contain any ideas of command and obedience. Yet it obviously originates in a juridical metaphor. In a well governed state there will be laws which are for the most part observed by the citizens. Lawbreaking will occur comparatively seldom, and will be punished when detected. The more powerful the government and the cleverer the police is, the rarer it will be. Let us suppose now the government to be omnipotent and the police to be omniscient. In this ideal case the behavior of the citizens would completely conform to the demands of the lawgiver<

1. Cf. the article “Natural Law” in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1933), xi, 284ff. (Georges Gurvitch). 2. The remarks in Ernst Cassirer, Das Erkenntnisproblein (2nd ed., Berlin, 1911), I, 367ff. and especially in Franz Borkenau, Der Übergang vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Weltbild (Paris 1934), 15-97 are not quite reliable. The article “law” in Murray’s New English Dictionary gives most valuable material. Some material is to be found in Littré’s French, in Liddell-Scott’s Greek, and in Harper’s Latin Dictionary. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae has not yet proceeded to the article “lex”. The Vocabulario della Crusca and Du Cange, Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis, do not contain material referring to our problem. Hans Kelsen in his article “Die Entstehung des Kausalgesetzes aus dem Vergeltungsprinzip”, Journal of Unified Science (‘Erkenntnis,), 1940, 69 ff., and his book Vergeltung und Kausalitat (which will appear in Holland) derives the ideas of causality and physical law from the juridical idea of retribution. Kelsen’s valuable paper could not be used in this article. 246<


"and laws would be always observed. With such an ideal state nature was compared in the seventeenth century. The observable recurrent associations of physical events, in which the philosophers and scientists of the period began to be interested, were interpreted as divine commands and were called natural laws. Thus the concept of natural law originated in theological ideas. Later these non-empirical components fell gradually into oblivion. Our historical investigation, therefore, will have to trace the idea of God as a lawgiver to nature and the influence of this idea on the rising natural sciences. Since one is, generally speaking, inclined to consider contemporary ideas as a matter of course and to ascribe them uncritically to thinkers of the past, we shall bring into prominence the differences from modern thinking before the seventeenth century. Finally we shall try to explain sociologically why the concept of physical law was lacking then and why it developed in the period of Descartes, Hooke, Boyle, and Newton.<


Laws" in Science: While scientific theories are often tested and refined, some theories gain widespread acceptance and become foundational to a particular field, sometimes referred to as "laws". These "laws" are not absolute truths but rather well-established principles that have withstood rigorous testing and are used to make predictions and explain phenomena. Natural Science Theories as Laws: In natural sciences, theories that have been extensively tested and verified, such as Newton's laws of motion or the laws of thermodynamics, are often considered "laws". These "laws" provide a framework for understanding and predicting natural phenomena. http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Zilsel%20Genesis.htm<


dLaws" in Science: While scientific theories are often tested and refined, some theories gain widespread acceptance and become foundational to a particular field, sometimes referred to as "laws". These "laws" are not absolute truths but rather well-established principles that have withstood rigorous testing and are used to make predictions and explain phenomena. Natural Science Theories as Laws: In natural sciences, theories that have been extensively tested and verified, such as Newton's laws of motion or the laws of thermodynamics, are often considered "laws". These "laws" provide a framework for understanding and predicting natural phenomena.