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Mechanisms, Laws, and Regularities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Holly K. Andersen
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Abstract

Leuridan argued that mechanisms cannot provide a genuine alternative to laws of nature as a model of explanation in the sciences, and he advocates Mitchell's pragmatic account of laws. I first demonstrate that Leuridan gets the order of priority wrong among mechanisms, regularity, and laws, and then make some clarifying remarks about how laws and mechanisms relate to regularities. Mechanisms are not an explanatory alternative to regularities; they are an alternative to laws. The existence of stable regularities in nature is necessary for either model of explanation: regularities are what laws describe and what mechanisms explain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 325 - 331
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Much thanks to Jim Bogen, Sandra Mitchell, Peter Machamer, Endre Begby, and others for illuminating discussions on these issues. I would also like to thank several anonymous referees for helpful feedback and suggestions.

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