Mill-Ramsey-Lewis Accounts of Law
If we organised all the facts about the world into a system, and
that system had the best balance between simplicity and strength,
then the axioms and high-level theorems of that system would be the
laws of nature.
Literature
See Lewis 1973b, pp
72-77, and Lewis 1983,
pp213-218.
Problems
It is unclear how we should measure simplicity and strength, and
how we should balance them. Further, there is no guarantee that
there will be a winning system. Finally, it isn't clear that
empirical investigation will produce approximations to the correct
laws, nor is it clear how we could know whether we got it right or
wrong.
Copyright David Chart 1998