From: "Greg Hall" <gregoryjayhall-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Laws and Patterns
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 17:11:17 -0700


Hans posed the following:

I think this is what RB means with the sentence:

>It is a condition of the intelligibility of experimental
>activity that in an experiment the experimenter is a
>causal agent of a sequence of events but not of the causal
>law which the sequence of events enables him to identify.

Now Bhaskar's next sentence is:

>This suggests that there is an ontological distinction
>between scientific laws and patterns of events.

How does this follow?  Can someone make this more explicit?

My answer is the following:

The ontological distinction between scientific laws and patterns of events 
is that scientific laws exist independently while the existence of patterns 
of events is dependent on specific causal conditions.  Scientific laws are 
tendencies that can manifest themselves in different ways.  A scientific law 
in an open system can lead to a set of events and the same law can lead to a 
different set of events in a closed system.  The law stays the same, but it 
is manifested in different ways depending on the system in which it 
operates.

Patterns of events exist dependent on the system in which they occur.  A 
pattern of events will only exist when specific causal conditions are in 
place.

The experiment demonstrates this ontological distinction.  The experiment 
shows that under artificially constructed circumstances created by the 
experimenter a scientific law will be actualized in a specific pattern of 
events that I will call Pattern A.  However, outside of the artificially 
constructed circumstances Pattern A does not occur.  Instead, the scientific 
law causes other events.  Pattern A does not occur because the causal 
influence of the experimenter is no longer there.  Pattern A can only exist 
when the experimenter has causal influence on how the law is manifested.  
Since the scientific law is useful in manipulating nature or explaining 
phenomena outside of the experiment where Pattern A existed, we can deduce 
that the scientific law exists independent of the events that it causes.  
Hence, the scientific law exists whether or not the experimenter conducts 
the experiment.  Pattern A only exists when the experiment is performed.  
Thus the ontological distinction between scientific laws and patterns of 
events is that the former’s existent is independent of the causal conditions 
that lead to the actual events while the latter’s existence depends on the 
causal conditions that actualize the events.

Does this mean that the real is the scientific laws, the actual is the ways 
that scientific laws are manifested absent the causal influence of the 
experimenter, and the empirical is the ways that in fact the laws are 
manifested in the experiment?

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