What is a Law of Nature?
E530417
"What is a Law of Nature?" is a philosophical essay—collected in *The Concept of a Person and Other Essays*—that examines the nature, status, and explanatory role of laws of nature in our understanding of the world.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| What is a Law of Nature? canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T5539862 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: What is a Law of Nature? Context triple: [The Concept of a Person and Other Essays, hasPart, What is a Law of Nature?]
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A.
The Concept of Nature
The Concept of Nature is a 1920 philosophical work by Alfred North Whitehead that analyzes the relationship between nature, perception, and scientific description, laying groundwork for his later process philosophy.
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B.
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature
"Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature" is Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s early work in which he develops a speculative, Romantic-influenced philosophy of nature that complements and prepares the ground for his later System of Transcendental Idealism.
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C.
The Laws of Nature
*The Laws of Nature* is a popular science book by physicist Rudolf Peierls that explores how fundamental physical principles govern the behavior of the universe.
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D.
Jus naturae methodo scientifica pertractatum
Jus naturae methodo scientifica pertractatum is a major work of early modern philosophy in which Christian Wolff systematically develops natural law using a rigorous, quasi-mathematical method.
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E.
On Nature
On Nature is a lost philosophical treatise by the pre-Socratic thinker Anaximander, in which he is believed to have explored early cosmology, metaphysics, and the principles underlying the natural world.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: What is a Law of Nature? Target entity description: "What is a Law of Nature?" is a philosophical essay—collected in *The Concept of a Person and Other Essays*—that examines the nature, status, and explanatory role of laws of nature in our understanding of the world.
-
A.
The Concept of Nature
The Concept of Nature is a 1920 philosophical work by Alfred North Whitehead that analyzes the relationship between nature, perception, and scientific description, laying groundwork for his later process philosophy.
-
B.
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature
"Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature" is Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s early work in which he develops a speculative, Romantic-influenced philosophy of nature that complements and prepares the ground for his later System of Transcendental Idealism.
-
C.
The Laws of Nature
*The Laws of Nature* is a popular science book by physicist Rudolf Peierls that explores how fundamental physical principles govern the behavior of the universe.
-
D.
Jus naturae methodo scientifica pertractatum
Jus naturae methodo scientifica pertractatum is a major work of early modern philosophy in which Christian Wolff systematically develops natural law using a rigorous, quasi-mathematical method.
-
E.
On Nature
On Nature is a lost philosophical treatise by the pre-Socratic thinker Anaxagoras that outlined his cosmology, including the role of Mind (Nous) in ordering the universe.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (35)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
academic article
ⓘ
philosophical essay ⓘ work of analytic philosophy ⓘ |
| about |
conceptual clarification of “law of nature”
ⓘ
epistemic role of laws in science ⓘ philosophical analysis of laws of nature ⓘ |
| describedIn | The Concept of a Person and Other Essays ⓘ |
| discusses |
modal force of laws of nature
ⓘ
necessity versus contingency of laws ⓘ relation between laws and explanation ⓘ role of laws in counterfactuals ⓘ role of laws in prediction ⓘ |
| examines |
criteria for something’s being a law of nature
ⓘ
distinction between accidental generalizations and laws ⓘ how laws of nature figure in scientific understanding ⓘ how laws of nature relate to regularities ⓘ how laws of nature support explanation ⓘ |
| field |
metaphysics
ⓘ
philosophy ⓘ philosophy of science ⓘ |
| focusesOn |
explanatory role of laws of nature
ⓘ
nature of laws of nature ⓘ status of laws of nature ⓘ |
| genre | philosophical literature ⓘ |
| hasForm | essay ⓘ |
| includedInCollection | The Concept of a Person and Other Essays ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainTopic |
explanation
ⓘ
governing conception of laws ⓘ laws of nature ⓘ metaphysics of laws ⓘ necessity in nature ⓘ philosophy of science ⓘ regularity theory of laws ⓘ |
| partOf | The Concept of a Person and Other Essays ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: What is a Law of Nature? Description of subject: "What is a Law of Nature?" is a philosophical essay—collected in *The Concept of a Person and Other Essays*—that examines the nature, status, and explanatory role of laws of nature in our understanding of the world.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.