Laws of nature

“ It is the reason for the transference of character from occasion to occasion. It is the reason for the relative stability of laws of Nature, some laws for a wider environment, some laws for a narrower environment. ”

“ Except where it cannot be helped, I do not believe in altering or modifying the laws of nature, as enforced upon animals, by one jot or one tittle. Nature, nature, nature—that is the beginning and end of my ideas about a collection of living wild animals. ”

“ The laws of nature comprise nurture, growth, and propagation, with their powers and all conditions attached thereto. This is particularly the case with plants and animals, to the exclusion of earth, stones, metals, and elements. ”

“ If we are asked whether we can explain such laws further, we usually reply by saying "these are the forces of the natural world." Their correlations and modifications rule the kingdom of nature, and the great globe itself;—nay, they wield the empire of the Universe! ”

“ Nature, therefore, must be called upon to explain her own phenomena. Since the laws of nature are found by investigating nature phenomena as we experience them, the laws must be a part of nature and can be found nowhere else. ”

“ The infinite starry worlds and heavenly bodies are nature’s obedient subjects. The earth and its myriad organisms, all minerals, plants and animals are thralls of its dominion. But man through the exercise of his scientific, intellectual power can rise out of this condition, can modify, change and control nature according to his own wishes and uses. Science, so to speak, is the “breaker” of the laws of nature. ”

“ The laws of nature having subjected mankind to a state of absolute dependence on something out of it, and manifestly beyond themselves, or the compound exertion of their natural powers, gave them the first conception of a superior principle existing ”

“ One of the most striking generalizations of recent science is that even Laws have their Law. Phenomena first, in the progress of knowledge, were grouped together, and Nature shortly presented the spectacle of a cosmos, the lines of beauty being the great Natural Laws. ”

“ All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with form, color, and motion, that every globe in the remotest heaven; every chemical change from the rudest crystal up to the laws of life; every change of vegetation from the first principle of growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest and antediluvian coal-mine; every animal function from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong, and echo the Ten Commandments. ”

“ Nature's laws are God's laws. All nature, the universe itself, is an expression of God's thoughts or desires in accordance with His laws. This one controlling force, this principle of law, is at the bottom of everything in nature and art. ”

“ Add to this that many of the laws of nature have only to be expressed to be admitted—laws whose concretes were objects of observation to our earliest ancestors away back in the youth of life upon our globe, and are, to us at least, intuitive—and we see how natural the attribution of necessity to them appears. Besides this, the word law conveys a meaning entirely outside its scientific acceptation. ”

“ Even with our present imperfect faculties we frequently arrive at the highest confirmation of our views of the laws of Nature by tracing their action under singular circumstances." "A miracle may be only an exact fulfilment of a general law of Nature, under such singular circumstances that, to those imperfectly acquainted with that law, it appears to be in direct opposition to it." ”

“ In Nature, in God's creation, we discover only laws—laws of undeviating strictness, and sure penalties annexed for their violation. There is associated with natural laws no system of mercy; that dispensation is not revealed in Nature, and is contained in the Scriptures alone. With the double view just presented, I feel that Science and Religion may walk hand in hand. ”

“ Such a basis harmonizes with the great fundamental or general laws of Nature, as we find that they are all based upon the highest or most perfect development of her works. Any other basis or lower standard would reflect upon the Creator of all things, and interfere with the harmony and order which exist in Nature's operations. ”

“ Formidable as this statement may appear, it will perhaps vanish when compared with the weight of evidence drawn from the almost universal experience of the human race. The laws of nature are uniform and immutable. ”

“ There are laws which govern nature, and the principles of matter with which we are surrounded, with which many of us are familiar. These laws are as unchangeable as the revolution of the earth upon its axis, or as the rising and setting of the sun. ”

“ But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong ‘the Law of Nature’, they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation, and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law—with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it. ”

“ We have now run over the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises. ”

“ We find men constantly writing and speaking of what nature does, of her laws, and her various operations in the visible world, as if nature were really a living active agent, and possessed some inherent power to direct her own movements and execute her own laws. ”

“ A great philosopher has observed, that we can command nature only by obeying her laws; and this principle is true even in regard to the astonishing changes which are superinduced in the qualities of certain animals and plants by domestication and garden culture. ”

“ or, rather, there are no other rules than the general laws of nature, which soar above the whole field of art, and the special rules which result from the conditions appropriate to the subject of each composition. ”

“ Unless we make the unscientific and preposterous assumption that our present knowledge of nature and of natural forces is absolute and complete, it is unscientific and illogical to declare at once that any supposed events could not have happened merely because they seem to have contradicted so-called natural laws. ”

“ And for this reason—that though Nature lays down the great constitutional laws within which man, her completest representative, must work; and though Nature as a whole formulates the main outlines of her ideal; yet man within that constitution can make his own laws, and within its main outlines may refine and perfect the ideal. ”

“ It is true that we may not understand the law that the so-called miracle comes under, but the Author of all natural law does. We do not pretend to dispute but that the Power that made nature's laws can change them if He sees fit ”

“ For it became him who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature; ”

“ The stars and suns swinging through infinite space, all earthly forms of life and existence whether mineral, vegetable or animal come under the dominion and control of natural law. Man through scientific knowledge and power rules nature and utilizes her laws to do his bidding. ”

“ Now, I have chosen the case of natural selection because, as alluded to in the text, it is the law of all others which is the most conspicuously effective in producing the harmonious complexity of nature. But the same kind of considerations may be seen to apply to most of the other general laws with which we are acquainted, particularly if we bear in mind that the general outcome of their united action as we observe it—the cosmic harmony on which so much stress is laid—is not perfectly harmonious. ”

“ When you say that nature is governed by certain laws, this may only mean that nature does, in fact, behave in a certain way. The so-called laws may not be anything real—anything above and beyond the actual facts which we observe. ”

“ So again it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but I mean by nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us. ”

“ More to the point, at this stage of our inquiry, than a formally precise definition of Nature, is a consideration of the motives which lead us to acknowledge as real the facts that we all call physical, — viz. to acknowledge the existence of matter, the laws of natural processes, and the dependence of our own mental life upon these processes. To this aspect of the problem of Nature we accordingly at once proceed. ”

“ He toucheth the hills and they smoke.” “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust.” But now comes Science and explains all these phenomena by natural laws and resident forces, and we all accept her explanation. Thus, one by one the phenomena of Nature are explained by the operation of resident forces according to natural laws, until the whole course of Nature, as we now know it, has been, or will be, or conceivably may be, thus explained. ”

“ All that passes in him, all that is done by him, as well as all that happens in Nature, or that is attributed to her, is derived from necessary laws, which produce necessary effects; from whence necessarily flow others. ”

“ Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and equips another animal to destroy it. ”

“ But Nature, that knows best its own laws, and the several properties of bodies, knows also best how to adapt and fit them to her designed ends, and whoso would know those properties, must endeavour to trace Nature in its working, and to see what course she observes. ”

“ A true natural law is an universal rule, and, as such, admits of no exceptions.
Again, human laws have no meaning apart from the existence of human society. Natural laws express the general course of nature, of which human society forms only an insignificant fraction. ”

“ The fact that substance is everywhere subject to eternal movement and transformation gives it the character also of the universal law of evolution. As this supreme law has been firmly established and all others are subordinate to it, we arrive at a conviction of the universal unity of nature and the eternal validity of its laws. ”

“ If all things and all events are produced by the agency of natural laws, and those laws are universal and unchangeable, we are unable to conceive any world above or beyond nature, or any world in any sense distinguishable from the present natural world. ”

“ Hence living bodies should obey the same great laws as other matter—nor, throughout Nature, is there a law of wider application than this, that a body impelled by two forces takes the direction of their resultant. ”

“ As has been shown, the principle applies to organic as well as to inorganic nature, and is only a broader principle including that of the Survival of the Fittest. There is a physical side to all psychical functions, and everywhere our investigation shows us the physical following unchanging laws. ”

“ If we define Nature as phenomena governed by physical and chemical laws and forces, then life becomes supernatural and miraculous—because higher than Nature as we define it. If we reduce the phenomena of life to law and include these also in our definition of Nature but limit it there, then the free, self-determined phenomena357 of reason become supernatural because above our definition of Nature. ”

“ For this is the work of physical nature, [37] which makes and produces and regulates everything just as it has been commanded. Nature, I say, is found to be maintained among animals also in their actions. ”