A physical law or scientific law is, according to the Oxford English dictionary, "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present." Physical laws are typically conclusions based on repeated scientific experiments and observations over many years and which have become accepted universally within the scientific community. The production of a summary description of our environment in the form of such laws is a fundamental aim of science. These terms are not used the same way by all authors.
The distinction between natural law in the political-legal sense and law of nature or physical law in the scientific sense is a modern one, both concepts being equally derived from physis, the Greek word (translated into Latin as natura) for nature.
Read more about Physical Law: Description, Examples, Laws As Definitions, Laws Being Consequences of Mathematical Symmetries, Laws As Approximations, Physical Laws Derived From Symmetry Principles, History: Religion, Greek Philosophy, and The Role of Roman Law in The Development of The Concept of , Other Fields
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or law:
“... life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“Mr. Brownlow: The law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.
Bumble: If that’s what the law supposes, sir, then the law’s an ass. And if that’s the eye of the law, sir, then the law’s a bachelor.”
—Vernon Harris (c. 1910)