ABSTRACT
The concept of natural law is ambiguous. It can mean an observed pattern, perhaps for which some mathematical expression has been found. It can also mean some "modal necessity" that compels things to follow the pattern and obey the equations. The very notion of natural law has historical roots in law as edict. The notion of causal necessity simply transfers, for psychological reasons, the logical necessity of the model to the physical system concerned. Strictly speaking, however, determinism as causality is a metaphysical idea, apart from which it can only mean logical necessity. Logical necessity is a property of deductive systems and implies nothing about natural reality. One could say that chance is the scientific version of free will, insofar as both are unpredictable. It can, for example, play the same role in fixing constants or initial conditions that divine will played for the Enlightenment philosophers. Yet determinism and chance are equally ambiguous concepts.
