A Matter of (Natural) Laws

Rieppel, Olivier

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-14896-5_5

Olivier Rieppel²

Science seeks to discover laws of nature. Historically, such laws of nature were understood as ‘secondary causes’, enacted by a ‘First Cause’. Such an understanding of natural laws resulted in the ‘metaphor of the two books’. The Creator revealed himself through the Book of Revelation as much as through the Book of Nature. Exhaustive knowledge of the laws of nature would lead all the way back to knowledge of the First Cause. On this account, the study of nature would provide insights into moral and ethical issues. The attempt to derive what ‘ought to be’ from what ‘just is’ constituted a major roadblock preventing the acceptance of a materialistic conception of nature in general, and of theories of species transformation based on nothing but natural causes in particular.

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Department of Geology, The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60605-2496, USA
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Rieppel, O. (2011). A Matter of (Natural) Laws. In: Evolutionary Theory and the Creation Controversy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14896-5_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14896-5_5
Published: 10 October 2011
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