Creation and Conservation
Many religions view the universe as the creation of a divine being or beings. The value of such a view is manifold. Among other things, it implies that the world is at least ...
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Laws, Scientific
On the standard picture there are three kinds of facts. Some facts cannot have been otherwise. These facts include the conceptual truths (e.g., the fact that Rebecca is taller than Ab...
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Laws of Nature
The "laws of nature" are the general ways of working of the physical and mental world. Many natural scientists have as one of their great aims the uncovering of these laws...
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Laws of Nature [addendum]
Since David M. Armstrong's entry was first published in 1996, the philosophical debates he identifies have evolved in minor ways. There is still the central debate bet...
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Universals, a Historical Survey
The word universal, used as a noun, has belonged to the vocabulary of English-writing philosophers since the sixteenth century, but the concept of universals, and the p...
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Creation and Conservation