ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on natural philosophy and traces the use and meanings of the concept of 'laws' and related terms in both France and England. Francis Bacon used a concept of laws of nature that was closely connected to his idea of 'form' and was thus not more sharply defined than the latter. The emphasis of the 'Author of Nature' was certainly deliberate. In such a context the terminology of laws of nature was extremely useful: it always pointed to the author of those laws. However, the concept of laws inevitably referred to theology and metaphysics, and in those respects the Royal Society was all but homogeneous. In order to instrumentalize law-talk, it had to be explicated in different ways. Here, it was convenient that such different authorities as Bacon and Rene Descartes could serve as a resource. In Paris, as in England, the situation for research in natural philosophy changed dramatically in the 1660s.