TY - BOOK
TI - Laws and powers in the frame of nature
AU - Psillos, S.
PB - Oxford University Press
PY - 2018
CY - 
SN - 9780198746775
TODO - 10.1093/oso/9780198746775.003.0005
TODO - null
TODO - The aim of this chapter is to revisit the major arguments of the seventeenth-century debate concerning laws and powers in service of two main points. First, though the dominant conception of nature was such that there was no room for power in bodies, the very idea that laws govern the behaviour of (bits of) matter in motion brought with it the following issue, which came under sharp focus in the work of Leibniz: how can passive matter, devoid of power, obey laws? Though Leibniz’s answer was to reintroduce powers, two radically different conceptualizations of the relation between laws and powers became available after him. Hume denied powers altogether, whereas Newton thought that to introduce a power is to introduce a law. Second, though laws were meant to replace powers, the real dilemma ended up being not laws vs. powers, but rather necessity vs. non-necessity in nature. © the several contributors 2018.
ER -