ABSTRACT
Drawing from evolutionary biology, people find a useful counter-example to the thesis that barriers like complexity and openness are sufficient to prevent laws. In doing so it is important to explore the role of re-description in aiding scientific inquiry to find laws despite practical barriers. For comparison, the chapter suggests an example from social science that may serve as a candidate for nomologicality, and which suggests a useful analogy between the practice of natural and social scientific explanation, as well as a role for re-description in the latter. The chapter examines that there is an analogy between the situation just examined in evolutionary biology and that of social science—for in both cases the rejection of the claim to nomologicality was rooted in adherence to an overly idealized view of the role of laws in natural science. It also focuses on Dollo's Law which seems to be the best candidate for true nomological status.
