ABSTRACT
The gas laws, some of the other laws of thermodynamics, Ohms law, perhaps some dynamical and electrodynamic principles, all appear to state relations between quantities. The regularity account holds that laws are just certain constant conjunctions of events or states of affairs, and in this sense a law is regularity, and nothing more. Support for counterfactuals has traditionally been a touchstone for the adequacy of a proposal about the nature of laws. In the spirit of BP it is surely that quantities should be identified with the collections of numerical relations: having a quantity is to stand in a numerical relation, so these things are what are important. Moreover, being able to form the basis on which to put forward a plausible account of laws of nature would certainly count in favour of a particular theory of quantity; this might even be taken a requirement or desideratum of any satisfactory theory of quantity.
