Abstract
Normic laws have the form “if A, then normally B”. This paper attempts to show that if a philosophical analysis of normic laws (Sections 1, 5) is combined with certain developments in nonmonotonic logic (Sections 2, 4), then both the unity and the diversity of scientific disciplines can be seen in a new perspective (Section 8.9). In particular, this perspective may shed new light on various received questions such as the importance of individual case understanding in the humanities (Section 2), theory-protection through addition of auxiliary hypotheses (Section 3), the fundamental role of evolution in the explanation of normic laws and their relation to statistical normality (Section 5), the different nature of ceteris paribus laws (Section 6) and of the underlying system laws (Sections 7, 8) in physical versus non-physical sciences. The resulting picture is one of unity on the background of diversity on the background of unity (Section 9).
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Schurz, G. (2009). Normic Laws, Non-Monotonic Reasoning, and the Unity of Science. In: Rahman, S., Symons, J., Gabbay, D.M., Bendegem, J.P.v. (eds) Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science. Logic, Epistemology, And The Unity Of Science, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2808-3_12
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