law of nature
Britishnoun
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an empirical truth of great generality, conceived of as a physical (but not a logical) necessity, and consequently licensing counterfactual conditionals
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a system of morality conceived of as grounded in reason See natural law nomological
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See law 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today describes "a missing law of nature," recognizing for the first time an important norm within the natural world's workings.
From Science Daily • Oct. 16, 2023
Similarly, maybe there’s no law of nature or principle of reality that guarantees humanity’s survival, but we just so happen to occupy a world in which human extinction isn’t something that will ever occur.
From Salon • Oct. 8, 2023
It is a law of nature that there is never too much cowbell.
From New York Times • Jul. 14, 2023
This week once again showed democracy in our two countries is not a law of nature, but must be protected and defended.
From Slate • Dec. 8, 2022
What is important for our immediate purposes is the way in which his discussion echoes through the later literature on the law of nature, for of course Montaigne was read by all the educated.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
