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:
“The author’s conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.”
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“They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the government breaks it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)