Science laws pdf

Kelsen's legal theory is thus not fully autopoietic, because norms form a hierarchy, not a circle. His theory doesn't achieve the generative circularity that is characteristic of autopoietic systems, but uses the "basic norm" instead as a generative seed for the dynamic norm-production of the system.

Kelsen's theory thus bears a striking resemblance to the economic theory of Ricardo, which uses com as a "basic commodity" by which all value can be measured in the repro- duction of the means of production. In this sense, Hayek has already outstripped the autopoieticists in recon- ciling the conflict between normative work and social science that af- flicts all forms of positivism, legal and scientific.

Luhmann's first and most clearly defensible assertion is that social systems are autopoietic. His second assertion, which he correctly believes to be more problematic, is that under cer- tain conditions the legal system, as a subsystem of the social system, relativity is a natural geometric theory, which can be easily visualized once we have fashioned a good myth for it.

See 1 F. Jean-Pierre Dupuy appreciates Luhmann's link to Hayek. See generally L. At the outset Luhmann denies the origin of the autopoietic paradigm in the conscious- ness of an observer.

See pp. Luhmann is troubled, nonetheless, by the need of self-refer- ential systems including the system of the observer! May ] Autopoietic Law can be at least partly autopoietic in the manner of the general social system. Hence autopoietic law involves a claim about law and a claim about society. Law and Society Almost every statement about autopoietic law can be and is con- tested in the marvelous essays of Teubner's collection. Nevertheless, autopoietic law lays down some broad vistas.

Viewing them refreshes the soul of even the most theory-weary reader. By itself, the. Teubner p. Hart's formulation of the proposition that in complex societies law serves the secondary ftinction of recog- nizing norms that serve the primary function of directing or facilitat- ing behavior.

In other words, autopoietic law embeds H. Hart's "rule of recognition" or Kelsen's "basic norm," which like all positivist proceduralisms fall from the heavens, in a social practice. The social practice in which Luhmann embeds the legal recursive- ness of complex societies is a vision of society as communication.

Especially in the essays of proponents. Compare Luhmann's contributions pp. Hart's theory is even less autopoietic than Kelsen's, since he divides all norms into two great categories, those that generate other norms and those that are generated by other norms.

Thomas Heller's piece, Accounting for Law, is the only one in the volume to discuss the politics of autopoiesis directly. I guess the others really believe that the legal sys- tem is autonomous, or that God does not play politics in evolution. Luhmann models the legal system as a subsystem of society, where society is itself an autopoietic system whose elements are communications: The social system consists of meaningful communications - only of communications, and of all communications.

It forms its elementary units from the synthesis of information, communication, comprehension, i. It is the setting in which members of a community coordinate action to pursue common conceptions of meaning. As such, Habermas prefers commu- nicative action to system, though system is necessary to "pay the rent" and must be modelled by the social scientist.

Luhmann's notion of communication lacks the critical bite of Habermas' conception. Society, for Luhmann, is communication - a ceaseless expression of information by one and comprehension by an- other. Luhmann does not oppose communication to system - Habermas' anti-utopia. Rather Luhmann opposes communication to action itself, which Luhmann regards as the choice of addressees for communication action means not communicating to those who are not chosen.

Action is thus a "powerfully simplifying self-observation or self-description of the system by itself,"59 which keeps communica- tion, hence society, going.

Consequently, no one ideal model of com- municative action, such as Habermas' ideal speech situation, deserves pride of place in the signalling interchanges that both motivate func- tional systems and are facilitated by them. Communication is textured presupposes society and always continues society, there is no communication outside society and therefore no communication of society with its environment.

No man can communicate in the sense of achieving communication without thereby constituting society, but the so- cial system itself precisely for this reason! See also N. Luhmann writes very fast. He also presents a moving target. His writing is a way of thinking, a real dialogue with the republic of letters. One might almost say that Luhmann's oeuvre itself is autopoietic: it unceasingly regenerates itself, maintaining its identity by changing its elements.

Thus almost anything one says about Luhmann's thought is bound to be wrong, since he, like quantum reality, leaves a position as soon as one observes him taking it. In other words, he is a great theorist.

See I ]. As an American, I hate the idea of a system "observing itself. Nevertheless, Luhmann's sentence makes sense. A system "describes itself" by specifying the exact "routes of communication" describing the system. The system does not describe itself in a blueprint of routes, but through actions that make and remake the routes during the life of the system.

Hence, the system de- scribes itself through actions. It is also possible to understand the idea that systems, as opposed to individuals, have actions.

The bank teller is everyone's favorite example: customer and teller interact according to patterns dictated by a system. One can't even say that the "creator" of the system dictated the patterns, since she too is fulfilling the prerequisites of a system, and so forth. From the point of view of individuals, system actions are "roles.

It need not even include speech, certainly not rational discourse, so long as it expresses information calculated to change the understanding in some way of an addressee of the communication. The exact meaning of "law defines law" becomes crystal clear as soon as one formulates the proposition in terms of communication. One cannot make "political" or "moral" statements to a person who expects "legal" ones. A "political" or "moral" statement simply will not register.

The statement can certainly have moral or political con- tent - no autopoieticist would deny that most or all legal statements do - but it must be in "legal form" in order for the addressee of the statement, behaving as if she is in a legal setting, to receive it and do something about it. After all, the addressee is on the hook. She re- quires a legal statement, because she must in tum make a responsive legal statement either back to the maker of the original statement or to a third party.

Think of a purchaser of real property, who needs a deed in order to give a deed to some future purchaser. When asked for "reasons," she must be able to refer back to an original statement, lest her subsequent statement be rejected by the third party, and so forth.

Autopoietic law is thus more radical than the formulation of either Kelsen or Hart because it insists that every "legal communication" must respond to a prior legal communication, and every legal commu- nication must command a subsequent legal communication.

It is also more radical, because it eliminates two very compelling and destruc- tive notions that plague the dominant legal theories.

These are the notions of "center" which we traditionally associate with positivism , and "hierarchy" which we associate with naturalism. Luhmann's vision of society lacks the usual topology of social, political, and legal thinking. Hobbes, for example, starts with the im- age of a level social universe, the state of nature, only to show how it is possible to construct a sovereign out of it.

The sovereign is a center, around which the whole of society revolves. Kelsen less so Hart imagines a "hierarchy" of norms their naturalist softening of positiv- ism. Our image of order is indelibly impressed with images of hierar- chy and center. We find it difficult to imagine society-without them.

His social science takes no position on center or hierar- chy see, e. We may, of course, behave in accordance with the way of talking, but not because "center" or "hierarchy" are givens. We do not make legal statements to one another because we are obey- ing the orders of a central sovereign or are reflecting a natural or con- structed legal hierarchy.

We make legal statements because we wish to have an impact on the understanding of persons who expect us to be making legal statements. Our legal statements form an autopoietic system, in that every legal statement serves to generate the network of operations constituting further legal statements. Legal Theory The attraction of autopoiesis for legal theorists flows exactly from its ability to account for two characteristics of individuality: self-moti- vation the dynamism of legal systems and self-maintenance the resistance of legal systems to outside forces.

Legal systems give rise to legal norms in ways that cannot be mechanically traced to forces from the environment, such as politics or religion. Even if a society is utterly stable even if its legal system fully reflects all possible social forces , certain legal systems still appear to have the dynamic capacity to transform society, or to resist transformation. Social science must be able to describe these systems, and the autopoietic lawyers claim to have discovered a means to do so.

Under certain conditions, which the autopoietic lawyers could in principle describe, a legal system can be a source of force in the society. It need not be only the passive instrument of outside powers. Positivism and naturalism, premised as they are on scientific mod- els giving no active role to individuals either as observers or as subjects of observation, cannot successfully model either component of individ- uality.

With regard to self-motivation, positivism at most promises the independence of the legal system from outside forces, once the power controlling the legal system has used the procedure it offers to set the mark of legality on certain compelling orders.

Positivism reduces self-motivation to autonomy. Yet the autonomy of the posi- tivist system is passive, a freedom from outside forces. Positivist au- tonomy is not active autonomy, not a freedom to be a source of force independently contributing to the array of forces in society.

Positive legal systems cannot generate law out of law, from within the system, as an autopoietic system generates elements from elements within the system pp.

Positive law is always the result, the instrument, of outside powers - religion or politics or custom. I am reminded of the famous response of the governors of the Spanish colonial empire to orders from the king: "I obey, but I do not comply.

And, of course, the outside powers have nothing in them of law. Thus politics does not have its laws. It is naked force flowing from unabashedly interested agreements as if agreement did not require law! Nor does religion have laws.

Religion is the fantasy life, the Sunday hobby, of otherwise law-abiding citizens. May ] Autopoietic Law is open to and at the mercy of its environments. Positivism at least positivism before Kelsen always supposes that legal systems make law as mechanisms make things: only in response to inputs from outside the system. Like any mechanism, the legal system is a dead instru- ment, ready to be wielded by whatever power in society gains control over it.

The only validity the positivists can claim for law is that it does not betray or corrupt the wishes of the wielder of the instrument. But a positive system cannot even achieve this limited autonomy, since the wielder of the instrument can always corrupt it to suit detailed expres- sions of power in individual cases. Even minor powers, not "wielders of the instrument," can capture it quietly in single cases, unbeknownst to the wielding power.

Law as "orders" cannot even achieve order, unless a nonlegal force, such as "habit" in Austin, has already pro- duced it. The problem in naturalism is the excessive, counter-factual affinity of natural systems for stasis. Natural law is the perception of an es- sence. By contrast to positivism, the world of naturalism is legal stuff - whether divine laws, human laws, or laws of nature.

But laws only express the stuff; they cannot change it. Nor would the natural lawyer want to try. The naturalist judge is always stamping out departures from the expressed essence. The legal system serves to facilitate the impression of the essence on a world always threatening to dissolve into chaos. Autopoiesis, by contrast, defines a system that generates itself inde- pendently from its environment.

Autopoietic systems can, in princi- ple, be autonomous, or resistant to outside powers. Applied to law, autopoiesis asserts that under certain conditions laws do indeed gener- ate themselves. The auto- poieticists claim that they do not maintain autonomy as a value, and they are correct that the autonomy of legal systems under certain con- ditions is an empirical fact, which autopoiesis successfully models.

Exactly which laws generate themselves in this manner, whether general legal norms or specific applications of norms to single cases, is a critical problem for autopoietic law, especially as an account of the common law. See infra text accompanying notes ; cf pp. Lempert's detailed and illuminating comparison of the absolute autonomy sought by Continental theorists with the relative autonomy sought by empiricist common law scholars is important, and will support a central theme of this Book Review concerning the inapplicability ofautopoiesis as it presently stands to common law systems.

Nevertheless, Lempert agrees that autopoietic law puts its finger on something. The only change naturalism recognizes is corruption of or progress toward the essence - either chaos or reconstruction. Whereas positive systems have no internal life they lie there like clubs to be wielded by anyone powerful or clever enough to capture or use them , natural systems recognize no life outside themselves.

Everything different is diseased, not alive in another way. The essence that laws reflect is an essence precisely be- cause it is eternal and unchanging, though some naturalists play with the difference. Positivism treats legal change as legitimate - a fresh irruption of power. Naturalism cannot treat change as legitimate, for change always spells the death of the legal system. Autopoietic sys- tems, by contrast, require change. They do not just tolerate it as do positive systems.

So far in his work on autopoietic law Luhmann has used the model of law he developed in his pre-autopoietic work, A Sociological Theory ofLaw Luhmann's old work de-centers the individual in the legal system by functionally confining the legal system within a subsystem of the social system.

Luhmann finds func- tional confinement of the legal system useful for elucidating the empir- ical conditions under which the unity and autonomy of legal systems are possible.

But his emphasis on unity and autonomy may represent a retreat from autopoiesis. Like Hobbes, Luhmann attempts a project that is at once positivist and naturalist. Hence, Luhmann does not begin his work with the now usual positivist as- sumption that a procedure has fallen from the heavens.

Like Hobbes, Luhmann attempts to account for the natural growth of the procedure from a legal state of nature. Although Luhmann's account has a more modern style than Hob- bes', it has the same basic structure. See Preface to N. He then deduces the social structure and the civilized individual from his laws of nature Hobbes' naturalism. The positivist proceduralism and the civilized subject of the proceduralism are the deductive and empir- ical result of the laws of nature Hobbes' Spinozism.

Luhmann es- chews laws of nature, of course. Because they do so by cooperating with other individuals, they have expectations of the others' expectations. The key problem is whether individuals are prepared to revise their exptectations when another individual disappoints them - a cognitive response - or whether they are not prepared to revise their expecta- tions - a normative response.

Hobbes is very clear that the state of nature is characterized by the legal condition in which every man has a right to everything. Most latter-day Hobbesians suppose that the state of nature is one in which no man has a right to anything. This is not Hobbes.

But it is Hegel, for example, and it is Luhmann. The project in the Leviathan is to show how a restriction of the natural condition of plenitude of right is possible. The instrument of the restriction is contract. Hence Hobbes' legal theory is a theory of contracL The project for those, such as Luhmann, who see the state of nature as being devoid of legal matter - as a condition of no-right, to use Hohfeld's terminology - is to show how rights may evolve from nothing, typically through the property idea of building up expectations.

Hence Luhmann's legal theory, like Hegel's, depends on property rather than contract. This is not the place to explore the consequences of these positions, but they are obviously quite rich and interesting.

Even though Luhmann differs from Hobbes in this respect, the structure of his enterprise, like Hegel's, is virtually identical. The only real difference is that neither Hegel nor Luhmann, unlike Hobbes, believes in the notion of the legal state of nature. The development of law is then a progressive enchantment of nature through justification.

So, for example, if I lose a bet on a boxer whom I expect to win, I will revise my expectations of his skill if he loses fair-and-square.

My reaction is "cognitive. A crucial step along the path of realizing this desire is the insti- tutionalization of expectations, in which "expectations are based on the presupposed expectations of expectation on the part of a third party. Social systems evolve more effective ways of handling the coordi- nation problem, the natural history of which Luhmann explores in considerable depth.

Luhmann's notion of "expectations of expectations" reflects his general concern with the self-reflexivity of social phenomena, which he pursued in depth after the publi- cation of A Sociological Theory of Law in Luhmann's insight into the self-reflexivity of social phenomena, including legal phenomena, is beginning to be reflected in recent American legal scholarship.

The reflection is all the more remarkable since Luhmann's work is relatively unknown here. Douglas Hofstadter's extraordinary introduction to the effects of Kurt Godel's logic of reflec- tion on the sciences and humanities actually suggests the applicability of the logic of reflection to legal subjects.

See D. The major advances in chaos theory revolving around self-reflection gained gen- eral exposure only in See ]. See also B. Once again, a social theorist has tied the hard scientists, if not beaten them to the punch! May ] Autopoietic Law that the legal system is a functionally defined subsystem of the social system: the subsystem specializing in coordinating all other methods of coordination. Luhmann's functional definition is characteristically positivist and naturalist for at least three reasons.

It takes no position on the substance of norms. All that matters is that law can serve the overriding function of stabilizing expectations through generality. The mark of law is a procedure, whereby methods of generalizing norms are coordinated. But this is the method of positivism - marking law without attention to content. The naturalist point of Luhmann's functionalism is that law does not by itself determine the materials for generalization.

These are pro- vided to law by the evolution and play of societal processes. The hinge of the definition is reaction to disappointment. Luhmann excludes aspiration from the definition. The norm states a reaction to disappointment of expecta- tions one has about the behavior of another. It does not express expec- tations one has about one's own behavior. The norm is other- regarding, even if it is reciprocal.

The occupant of Luhmann's legal system, like the occupant of any positivist system, always regards norms as an outsider regards norms - describing the behavior of others. The norm is an instrument of stabilizing expectations about others. It is never the occupant's instrument for relating herself to others.

The individual as such is absent from the legal system. Others appear in the degraded condition of satisfying or disappointing expec- tations. They can never be individuals as such, collaborators in aspira- tion.

Yet both commands are norms, because both take a stance toward disappointment of the expectations set up in them. The distinction between cognitive and normative - the "is" and the At the time he published A Sociologzi:al Theory of Law in , Luhmann was not at all shy about his positivist orientation.

He would have been far less comfort- able with the thought that his positivism, like all positivism, has a necessary naturalist compo- nent. Luhmann's positivism bears careful review, however, since autopoietic law is frankly nonpositivist, and the difficulty for Luhmann is in reconciling his old positivist results with his new nonpositivist inclinations.

For example, Luhmann comments on the validity of legislation: "Such passing of law can only occur to the extent that the selectivity itself is used for the stabilisation oflaw. Positive law is not valid because higher norms permit it, but because its selectivity fulfills the function of congruency.

The proceduralism of legal positivism is a way of fixing a boundary be- tween the two. We choose what we choose to disregard. The distinc- tion favors cognition over normation: one can disregard only what one has already regarded. Luhmann's legal theory, like all forms of positivism, favors cognition over normation.

As in positivist science, the role of law in positiv- ist legal theory and in Luhmann's is to enlarge the realm of effective cognition for utilitarian ends. Luhmann's Use of the Pre-Autopoietic Theory for Autopoiesis Luhmann's vision of the legal system in his old work hinges on the distinction between normative and cognitive reactions to disappoint- ment of expectations.

Law serves as a master device for congruently generalizing normative expectations. Luhmann preserves this distinc- tion in autopoietic law, because he wishes to assign a functionally de- fined role to the legal system as a subsystem of the social system. As Luhmann noticed, his old legal theory works well for the program of functionally confining the legal system, hence preserving its autonomy from the rest of society pp.

The formula Luhmann develops is that the legal system is auto- poietic for norms, defined in opposition to cognition. The legal system is normatively closed and cognitively open pp. Only norms recursively reproduce themselves in the manner of autopoiesis. Cogni- tion - the application of norms to real disputes and the formation of norms in response to real political, moral, and economic issues - is not legally recursive pp. The legal system maintains its normative integrity from Luhmann's perspective.

When individuals use the legal system to re- solve disputes, or legal functionaries give content to norms either by "finding" congruently generalized normative expectations or by hy- pothesizing them in legislation, then nonlegal forces affect the legal system.

It is cognitively open p. The role of cognition in Luhmann's pre-autopoietic legal theory is to serve the ends of civilized, utility-minded creatures who wish to maximize their convenience by cooperatively stabilizing expectations. Luhmann's autopoietic legal theory preserves the functional role of The naturalist point here is that what we regard, unlike what we choose not to regard, is not open to choice. And, like all forms of positivism, has a naturalist account of cognition.

May ] Autopoietic Law cognition, but adds a new role for the legal system that is special to autopoiesis: its dynamism albeit debased, from my point of view. Cognitive openness introduces asymmetries into the legal system. New cases present new problems of norm-application, hence norm- formation. New social conditions require different responses to old cases.

Without new cases and new social conditions the autopoietic system would exist "as pure tautology in total indeterminability" p.

A legal system in which every new case is an old case and for which social conditions are absolutely stable would not be autopoietic. An autopoietic system reproduces its operations through its elements, not its elements through its operations.

The legal system, like any autopoietic system, cannot be unless it is in motion pp. The cognitive openness of the legal system, according to Luhmann, drives it into the constant adjustments that make it dynamic, hence auto- poietic.

But the dynamism does not come from within the system. The self-motivation of the system serves the self-maintenance of the system, its autonomy. Internal reflection on norms serves only the purpose of consistency, or unity. Retreat The distinction between cognitive and normative and the func- tional confinement of the legal system within a subsystem of the social system detract from the force of the autopoietic paradigm for law for three reasons.

First, autopoiesis is a strong model of individuality, maybe too strong to be usefully applied to social systems. Before social science began modelling individuality in the era of Freud and Weber, the indi- vidual organism was available only as a metaphor for society.

The individual organism makes a demanding model. Durkheim, for example, is least convincing when he describes society as an organism in The Division of Labor in Society. It certainly sug- gests some version of the two ways scientists learn about organisms: structure anatomy and function physiology.

The danger of the model is that it may lead theorists to identify structure with institutions institutionalism and function with the sur- Hobbes describes tbe "Leviathan" either as an "artificial creature" mechanism or as a metaphor. Social theorists must always be vigilant to use structure and function if they use them at all in a more "value-neutral" sense. Thus Mark Gould has defined "struc- ture" as "patterns of social interaction, where violation of the pattern implies in the ideal case a negative sanction," and "function" as "consequences of [units'] actions for the system as a whole.

Autopoiesis thus takes a position on the "conse- quences of [units'] actions for the system as a whole. This is all well and good for the real biological individuals autopoiesis was originally meant to describe, but runs dead against the "value-neutral" definitions of structure and function which Luhmann still has a commitment to use. To accept autopoiesis as a model for social systems may involve adopting a cor- poratist or institutionalist politics and a teleological functionalism which Luhmann, for one, may not welcome.

Luhmann could, of course, maintain his commitment to "value- neutral" definitions of structure and function were he to confine auto- poiesis to the individual actor in the social system.

There is no theo- retical reason why the autopoiesis of the individual could not be broadened to include speech and actions that sociologists ordinarily classify as social action. Indeed, Hayek's version of autopoietic law does exactly this. Values are then part of the material substrate on which individuals autopoietically maintain themselves. But Luhmann does not wish to locate society in an account of values, which he believes require a level of cohesion that pluralist and conflict-ridden advanced industrial de- Nor, for that matter, may Luhmann's pre-autopoietic version of autopoiesis, his notion of "self-reflexivity," be consistent with a nonteleological functionalism.

Luhmann treads on especially dangerous ground when he applies "self-reflexivity" to function. May ] Autopoietic Law mocracies will not support. Norms - including legal norms - play the role in these theories of mediating between values, on the one hand, and individuals oriented toward values in concrete interactions, on the other.

Values for him are what the indi- vidual desires, rather than what is desirable. The self-reflexivity of communi- cation, communication about communication, replaces norms as the chief integrating mechanism of society. It is, dynamic, rather than autonomous. Second, assuming the propriety of the autopoietic model for soci- ety, it is difficult to imagine an autopoietic subsystem of an autopoietic system.

GOULD, supra note 90, at I am grateful to Mark Gould for pointing out to me the difference between "desired" and "desirable. See Luhmann's criticism of Durkheim's emphasis on the moral problem of sociology in id. Luhmann is quite clear that the role of the person in autopoietic law is to serve "merely [as] a point of allocation and address.

This is the classic positivist notion of the person - a legal accounting device for reconciling the double entry accounts of action and sanc- tion. The autopoiesis of the social system hence legal system must serve higher levels of com- plexity reduction than the person, who, admittedly, has her own subordinate level of autopoiesis in "consciousness.

Hayek's is the model of an autopoietic theory that puts values and individuals, mediated by norms, at the center of social theory. Teubner has especially focused on this problem. I shall not try to wrestle here with Teubner's fascinating use of the "hypercycle," and his thesis that legal auto- poiesis suggests the internalization of the evolutionary mechanisms of law.

They are worth de- tailed study. See also pp. The func- tionally bound subgroup has an autopoiesis only if it constitutes a social system within the general society, much as the cell forms an organism within the larger organism made up of cells.

But the auto- poiesis of the subgroup could not operate solely over the functional thematization of the subgroup within the larger society. A "legal sub- system" has an economy, a power structure, etc. The acid test of the subsystem will always be whether it is successfully meeting the functional demands of the social system.

The subsystem earns money, gets power, by meeting functional demands. Even a highly differenti- ated legal subsystem cannot obviously maintain the absolute control over production and reproduction of the legal code that autopoiesis requires. Communications can serve two mas- ters - "payment" can have both an economic and a legal significance pp.

Luhmann is aware of the difficulty of imagining an autopoiesis of function-specific communications in the context of an autopoietic so- cial system p. Luhmann thus confines legal autopoiesis to main- tenance of a code, the integrity of a system of legal communications pp. The effects of the code on "nonlegal" actions and communications - actual decisions of cases, bargaining in the shadow of actual decisions, the content of the normative elements of the code - need have no integrity, since they do not affect maintenance of the code.

The legal system is normatively closed and cognitively open. Luhmann solves the subsystem problem quite cleverly by compressing law into language - legal communications. Actual decisions, bar- gaining in the shadow of decisions, the content of norms - everything we ordinarily regard as important about legal systems - is not law, May ] Autopoietic Law according to Luhmann, but nonlegal communication and action in the form of legal communication.

In , this sense that the universe's laws were, in some contexts, flexible, led to a groundbreaking discovery by the German scientist Werner Heisenberg.

In postulating his Uncertainty Principle , Heisenberg realized that it was impossible to simultaneously know, with a high level of precision, two properties of a particle. In other words, you can know the position of an electron with a high degree of certainty, but not its momentum and vice versa. Niels Bohr later made a discovery that helps to explain Heisenberg's principle. Bohr found that an electron has the qualities of both a particle and a wave, a concept known as wave-particle duality , which has become a cornerstone of quantum physics.

So when we measure an electron's position, we are treating it as a particle at a specific point in space, with an uncertain wavelength. When we measure its momentum, we are treating it as a wave, meaning we can know the amplitude of its wavelength but not its location.

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Scientific Experiments. Whether we're launching a space shuttle or trying to discover another Earth-like planet, we rely on scientific laws and theories to guide us.

Hubble and his famous law helped to quantify the movement of the universe's galaxies. Thanks to Newton's universal law, we can figure out the gravitational force between any two objects. You can't win. You can't break even. You can't quit the game. Buoyancy keeps everything from rubber ducks to ocean liners afloat. A hypothetical and simplified example of how natural selection might play out amongst frogs. Einstein's theory of general relativity changed our understanding of the universe.

Is it a particle, a wave or both? A scientific theory is an explanation of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified using the scientific method and observation. Scientific theories are not guesses, but rather are a reliable account of how a certain natural phenomenon works. What is an example of scientific theory? One of the most popular scientific theories is Einstein's Special Relativity, which explains the relationship between space and time for objects moving at a consistent speed in a straight line.

The theory also explores a concept known as time dilation. Is a scientific law more accurate than a scientific theory? A scientific theory is a verifiable explanation of natural phenomenon. For example, the theory of gravity explains why an apple always falls to the ground when dropped. A law, on the other hand, is an observation. In simpler terms, a law predicts what happens and a theory explains why.

What are the five scientific laws? Sources Ask an Astronomer. March 21, July 11, June April 6, March 24, Cite This! Try Our Crossword Puzzles! Try Our Sudoku Puzzles! More Awesome Stuff. James Clerk Maxwell Newton's law of universal gravitation the law states that every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force acting along the line intersecting both points. The force is proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Newton's laws of motion First law: In an inertial frame of reference, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force. Third law: When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body. Ohm's law Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points.

Georg Ohm Pascal's law Pascal's law or the principle of transmission of fluid-pressure is a principle in fluid mechanics that states that a pressure change occurring anywhere in a confined incompressible fluid is transmitted throughout the fluid such that the same change occurs everywhere.

Blaise Pascal Pythagorean theorem In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem, also known as Pythagoras' theorem, is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the square of the hypotenuse the side opposite the right angle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

Pythagoras Rolle's theorem Rolle's theorem states that for any continuous, differentiable function that has two equal values at two distinct points, the function must have a point on the function where the first derivative is zero. Michel Rolle Stokes's law Stokes's law, for the frictional force — also called drag force — exerted on spherical objects with very small Reynolds numbers in a viscous fluid.

Stokes's law is derived by solving the Stokes flow limit for small Reynolds numbers of the Navier—Stokes equations. George Gabriel Stokes. PDF Download. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Study Materials Static GK.