Law

A necessary, essential, stable, recurrent connection between phenomena. A law expresses the connection between objects and between the elements composing a given object, between the properties of things, and between the properties within a given thing.
Not every connection, however, is a law. A connection may be necessary or contingent. A law is a necessary connection. It expresses the essential connection between things coexisting in space. This is functional law. Thus, for example, the law of universal gravitation says that all bodies are attracted to each other by a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. In addition to and in unity with functional laws, there are developmental laws, expressing the tendency, direction, or sequence of events in time. Thus, society develops from one socioeconomic formation to another. “The concept of law is one of the stages of the cognition by man of unity and connection, of the reciprocal dependence and totality of the world process” (V. I. Lenin, Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 29, p. 135).
In objective idealism, laws are interpreted as an expression of world reason embodied in nature and society. From the point of view of subjective idealism, laws are introduced into the real world by the knowing subject, that is, reason ascribes laws to nature. For example, according to neopositivism, a law is a purely logical phenomenon; objective necessity is not inherent in law; a law possesses only logical necessity. Dialectical materialism proceeds from the fact that laws have an objective character, expressing real relations between things, as well as their reflection in consciousness. Laws may be general to a greater or lesser extent. Less general laws operate in a limited field and are studied by specific concrete sciences—physics, chemistry, and biology, for example, the law of natural selection. More general laws, for example, the law of the conservation of energy and of the circulation of information, are studied by a number of disciplines. Universal laws, such as the laws of dialectics, including the law of the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative changes, are studied by philosophy.
Some laws express a strict quantitative dependence between phenomena and are fixed in science by mathematical formulas, for example, the law of universal gravitation; other laws cannot be expressed mathematically, for example, the law of natural selection. Laws may be dynamic or statistical. Dynamic laws express a necessary causal connection, where the interrelationship between cause and effect is univocal. Knowing the initial state of a particular system (for example, the movement of the earth around the sun and of the moon around the earth), the eclipse of the sun or moon can be accurately predicted. In contrast to a dynamic law, a statistical law is a dialectical unity of necessary and contingent events. In this case, the subsequent states follow not univocally from the initial state of the system but with a certain probability, which characterizes the extent to which a particular contingent event is capable of being realized (for example, winning in a lottery).
The realization of a law depends on the relevant necessary conditions, the presence of which ensures that the effects arising from a law will pass from a state of potentiality into actuality. In nature laws act as an elemental force. Social and historical laws, since they operate in the same way as the conscious actions of human beings, are the laws of human activity itself: they are created and carried out only by men. But the action of social laws, like that of the laws of nature, is objective: at the basis of the historical process is the development of the mode of production.
On the basis of the knowledge of laws, foreknowledge of the future is achieved, and theory is transformed into practice. It is possible, by means of known laws, to direct both natural and social processes. The laws reflected in thought constitute the nucleus of science. Man’s power over the surrounding world is measured by the extent and depth of his knowledge of its laws.
A. G. SPIRKIN