I have seen this question before.

First you have to define what you believe (and I emphasize the word believe) to be the laws of nature. Until they are defined (and I have yet to ever see them defined) then it is difficult to discuss them in the abstract. It is rather like discussing God, which may be all they are, the adopted term for the unknowable omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent force that rules the universe.

Laws of nature as everything what is true, undeniable or constantly in whole universe, like a gravitation or energy, the laws that drive this world.

The definition presented it's as ambiguous as the term. What is true and undeniable and constant? What is gravity (where is it in the microscopic world of quantum). Is it a law or a presence? Is gravity all there is or is it just a example? If we are to talk about the laws of nature we need a comprehensive and concrete definition. As I said, without such, we are discussing God who is also True, undeniable, and constant-for those who believe in God.

I don't know how to give good definition. Gravity is example. We see it. Laws of nature like a every planet in the Solar System moves around the Sun. This is because there is gravity. Next example: the speed of light in vacuum. This is a constant value. Laws of nature, it is something what we can't change.

I don't know how to give good definition. — kris22

This is the essential problem. The term is bandied about as is the term God, but any discussion about it v is without end because it is the omnipresent, omnipotent, unknowable forever that is guiding the universe. In other words, the term laws of nature is a religious substitute for atheists (and others) and thus is a religious discussion. There is nothing concrete-it is changing all the time.

"Laws of nature" is a metaphor. It is good to keep that in mind, and to retrace the birth of the metaphor. For example, watch Francis Bacon trying to convey the notion (before there was the expression "laws of nature"):

Although it is true that in nature nothing exists beyond separate bodies producing separate motions according to law; still for the study of nature that very law and its investigation, discovery and exposition are the essential thing, for the purpose both of science and of practice. Now it is that law and its clauses which we understand by the term 'forms' -- principally because this word is a familiar one and has become generally accepted. — Francis Bacon

If he were using 21st century internet conventions, he would place "law", in that sentence, in quotation marks. The "proper scientific term" for whatever it was that he was interested in was, as he explains, "forms" (Aristotelian forms).

An interesting experiment (and one which runs along Leibnizian tones) is to replace "law" for "custom" in the Baconian quote. The worldview arising from that is quite different than the one that uses "law".

"Laws of nature" is a metaphor. — Mariner

I quite agree. And even today, well...there are for instance laws in many countries against the use of marijuana. Laws are not inviolable rules.

This from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"If the law of gravity existed,' I say, 'I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistant. It seems to me that the law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that the law of gravity didn't have. Or a single scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it still 'common sense' to believe that it existed...The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Issac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense...and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads!..." Pirsig's italics

There's something I never see come up in these discussions, and I wonder if it's because I have this completely wrong. (Here's where I admit not bothering to research the issue, because I'm not that motivated to at the moment.)

I remember learning years ago that the law is just the observed regularity in our observations, and the theory is the explanation for why those regularities occur. So, massive bodies do predictably behave in a certain way, which we can describe mathematically, and we call that description the the law of gravitation. It's nothing like an explanation for why massive bodies behave this way, just a description. General relativity would be a theory that attempts to explain why massive bodies behave the way they do.

Do I have that distinction wrong? Or is there some other way people talk about this now?

2. Could there ever be no laws of nature? — kris22

If reality is an illusion then yes.

Law doesn't seem an appropriate word for some because it suggests a law giver. Some people say regularities.

I think there is an issue as to why anything exists and any disposition exists. If a creator created reality what caused him/her/it? If a creator doesn't exist how did reality create itself.

It is hard to conceive of a logical reason for things existence.

I remember learning years ago that the law is just the observed regularity in our observations, and the theory is the explanation for why those regularities occur. So, massive bodies do predictably behave in a certain way, which we can describe mathematically, and we call that description the the law of gravitation. It's nothing like an explanation for why massive bodies behave this way, just a description. General relativity would be a theory that attempts to explain why massive bodies behave the way they do.

Do I have that distinction wrong? Or is there some other way people talk about this now? — Srap Tasmaner

An observed regularity (or habitual behavior) had practical application but there is nothing that is 100%, precisely predictable. So there is the spectrum of approximate regularities upwards to complete surprises and everything in between. This is not a law but rather a description of every day life. Scientific theories and speculations (whether or not they have any ontological foundation) are precisely that. They are ideas that are subject to constant changes, interpretations, re-evaluation, and reformulation.

Hi

I have questions about laws of nature:
1. Laws of nature - are they eternal? — kris22

Depends on how you mean "eternal". In principle they're "there", timelessly, as are all hypotheticals, but they only apply in a universe, and a universe is time-bound because it's part of your life-experience, which is temporary.

We know, they are now, but was before universe and will be after?

Laws of nature are about a universe, and don't have meaning other than for, about, and in a universe.

2. Could there ever be no laws of nature?

No, and there couldn't have not been.

But, from an individual's own experiential point of view, there will come a time (a timelessness, actually) when there isn't a universe, a body, an individual life, or any knowledge that there ever were those things.

3. Is everything part of laws of nature?

No, but of course everything physical in a universe is part of the laws of nature and their consequences and conclusions.

Our worldly lives seem very long. They started well before we even remember, and it feels as if this life has always been. But its great duration is small in comparison to the timelessness at the end of worldly life.

Michael Ossipoff

No, but of course everything physical in a universe is part of the laws of nature and their consequences and conclusions — Michael Ossipoff

Thanks for the reply!
Can you tell what kind of things aren't part of laws of nature?

Can you tell what kind of things aren't part of laws of nature? — kris22

Maybe, if you can tell me what "nature" is.

Michael Ossipoff

Alright, I used the word "nature" when I said "laws of nature".

"Laws of nature" refers to physical laws.

The laws of physics are hypothetical relations (usually expressed by mathematical formulas or other mathematics statements) among hypothetical quantities called "physical quantities".

So your question was a fair one, and you don't have to define "nature", because I used that term in the passage that you quoted.

So your question can be reworded as:

"Can you tell me what kind of things aren't part of the physical laws?"

Sure. Mathematical theorems aren't part of the laws of physics. Abstract logical facts and statements, such as logical syllogisms aren't part of the laws of physics.

If-then facts about the hypothetical consequences of the laws of physics and certain hlypothetical values of the quantities that they're about, aren't part of the laws of physics either.

The physical laws are part of a system of inter-related and inter-referring hypotheticals.

Michael Ossipoff