What was the last scientific "law"?

[Genady]

For several hundreds of years important statements in natural sciences were called "laws". But some time ago new "laws" stopped to appear, and the important statements now seem to be rather called "principles" and "equations." Is it so? If so, what was the last "law"?

[iNow]

2 hours ago, Genady said:

If so, what was the last "law"?

That if a man speaks in the forest and his wife isn’t around to hear him he’s still wrong. 

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

That if a man speaks in the forest and his wife isn’t around to hear him he’s still wrong. 

LOL +1

[Genady]

8 minutes ago, iNow said:

That if a man speaks in the forest and his wife isn’t around to hear him he’s still wrong. 

Every "law" has a name. What is a name of this law? Is it "iNow first law"?

[dimreepr]

6 minutes ago, Genady said:

Every "law" has a name. What is a name of this law?

Edith...

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, Genady said:

For several hundreds of years important statements in natural sciences were called "laws". But some time ago new "laws" stopped to appear, and the important statements now seem to be rather called "principles" and "equations." Is it so? If so, what was the last "law"?

The Beer-Lambert law seems to have been formulated in 1913. Apart from that I can't think of any c.20th "laws", offhand. I'm speculating, but I suspect the notion of "laws" went out of fashion along with the "classical" absolute and deterministic worldview of science, which Einstein, Heisenberg et al threw out of the window in the first two decades of the c.20th. 

Most "laws" seem to be named after the person that formulated them - and to be broken in practice. 

[Genady]

11 minutes ago, exchemist said:

The Beer-Lambert law seems to have been formulated in 1913. Apart from that I can't think of any c.20th "laws", offhand. I'm speculating, but I suspect the notion of "laws" went out of fashion along with the "classical" absolute and deterministic worldview of science, which Einstein, Heisenberg et al threw out of the window in the first two decades of the c.20th. 

Most "laws" seem to be named after the person that formulated them - and to be broken in practice. 

Thank you. Perhaps I better narrow down the question and limit it to "precise sciences" (or whatever they are called) like physics and chemistry. Otherwise, we find things like "Tobler's first law of geography",

Quote

"everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."

 (Tobler's first law of geography - Wikipedia).

[studiot]

Nice Topic +1

 

Off the top of my head

Bragg's Law was also 1913.

The most recent I can quickly think of would be Moore's Law (1965) closely followed by Drake's Law, also called The Drake Equation (1961)

Edited June 10, 2023 by studiot

[Genady]

4 minutes ago, studiot said:

The most recent I can quickly think of would be Moore's Law (1965) closely followed by Drake's Law, also called The Drake Equation

I think that these more recent laws are called "laws" for marketing purposes. 

[swansont]

28 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Most "laws" seem to be named after the person that formulated them - and to be broken in practice. 

Or who popularized them. It’s not uncommon to find someone else got there first.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler's_law_of_eponymy

[Genady]

14 minutes ago, swansont said:

Or who popularized them. It’s not uncommon to find someone else got there first.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler's_law_of_eponymy

How does the Stigler’s law of eponymy apply to, say, Kepler's or Newton's laws? 

Edited June 10, 2023 by Genady
English!

[swansont]

4 minutes ago, Genady said:

How the Stigler’s law of eponymy applies to, say, Kepler's or Newton's laws? 

“Newton's first and second laws of mechanics were known and proposed in separate ways by Galileo, Hooke and Huygens before Newton did in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton owns the discovery of only the third one”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler's_law

No entry for Kepler’s laws, though. But there are a lot of entries overall.

[Genady]

6 minutes ago, swansont said:

“Newton's first and second laws of mechanics were known and proposed in separate ways by Galileo, Hooke and Huygens before Newton did in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Newton owns the discovery of only the third one”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_Stigler's_law

No entry for Kepler’s laws, though.

Yes, no entry for, e.g., Mendel's laws either.

I don't think that the Stigler's law would pass a statistical test.

[Jez]

Interesting question, I think it is more to do with how scientists engage with and rationalise theorems, some are 'rules', some are 'equations', some are 'effects', unclear what motivates the scientific community to designate a theorem as a 'law'.

I did a trawl for 20th century 'laws', in addition to those mentioned above, I found;

 

Marconi's law, ~1900

Umov's law, 1905

Hubble's law, 1922

Faxén's law, 1922

Zipf's law, 1932

Archie's law, 1942

Fitts's law, 1954

Heaps' law, 1960

Birch's law, 1960

Sérsic's law, 1963

Amdahl's law, 1967

Dermott's law, 1968

Byerlee's law, 1978

Metcalfe's law, 1980

Gustafson's law, 1988

Llinás's law, 1989

 

 

I'm not seeing anything in the 21st Century that is actually a real law describing phenomena in 'physical' equations.

 

Maybe that is precisely the reason, that the term has become abused generally and the scientific-ness of the expression has become over-copied by lay-pretenders?

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Thank you. Perhaps I better narrow down the question and limit it to "precise sciences" (or whatever they are called) like physics and chemistry. Otherwise, we find things like "Tobler's first law of geography",

 (Tobler's first law of geography - Wikipedia).

Disappointing. I had hoped it would be something to do with chocolate. 

[Genady]

2 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Disappointing. I had hoped it would be something to do with chocolate. 

LOL.

16 minutes ago, Jez said:

Interesting question, I think it is more to do with how scientists engage with and rationalise theorems, some are 'rules', some are 'equations', some are 'effects', unclear what motivates the scientific community to designate a theorem as a 'law'.

I did a trawl for 20th century 'laws', in addition to those mentioned above, I found;

 

Marconi's law, ~1900

Umov's law, 1905

Hubble's law, 1922

Faxén's law, 1922

Zipf's law, 1932

Archie's law, 1942

Fitts's law, 1954

Heaps' law, 1960

Birch's law, 1960

Sérsic's law, 1963

Amdahl's law, 1967

Dermott's law, 1968

Byerlee's law, 1978

Metcalfe's law, 1980

Gustafson's law, 1988

Llinás's law, 1989

 

 

I'm not seeing anything in the 21st Century that is actually a real law describing phenomena in 'physical' equations.

 

Maybe that is precisely the reason, that the term has become abused generally and the scientific-ness of the expression has become over-copied by lay-pretenders?

Thank you. Interesting list. I've started to look at these laws from bottom up and immediately found - attention, OT - that Llinas's law points to a fundamental difference between the neuron in neuroscience and the "neurons" in DNN used in AI. In DNN, all neurons are interchangeable, and the only difference is in the weights assigned to their connections.

32 minutes ago, Jez said:

Maybe that is precisely the reason, that the term has become abused generally and the scientific-ness of the expression has become over-copied by lay-pretenders?

Quite possible. Here is an anecdote:

"I have an equation; do you have one too?" Paul Dirac, on meeting Richard Feynman.

He didn't say "a law".

[iNow]

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

LOL +1

My wife may just be a member here as your upvote got erased. Lol

[swansont]

4 hours ago, Genady said:

Quite possible. Here is an anecdote:

"I have an equation; do you have one too?" Paul Dirac, on meeting Richard Feynman.

He didn't say "a law".

Laws in physics tend to be top-level, and also when big-picture concepts were being discovered - Newton’s laws of motion and of gravitation, laws of thermodynamics and ideal gas laws, Coulomb’s and Gauss’s laws in E&M, Ohm’s laws in circuits.

The naming of laws petered out as people got more into the weeds and fields got more specialized.

[Genady]

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

Laws in physics tend to be top-level, and also when big-picture concepts were being discovered - Newton’s laws of motion and of gravitation, laws of thermodynamics and ideal gas laws, Coulomb’s and Gauss’s laws in E&M, Ohm’s laws in circuits.

The naming of laws petered out as people got more into the weeds and fields got more specialized.

It seems to me that the Hubble's law was the last one that fits this description.

(Thanks for the list again, @Jez. +1)

[CharonY]

In addition to what swansont said, it also takes a while for something to establish itself as sufficiently robust before folks are even considering it a law. And with more and more detail work (as mentioned) it is going to become less likely.

Another thought is that scientific work (especially in the experimental realm) is increasingly collaborative and  a bit less elitist (as in having only few folks in a particular field). Findings are therefore more commonly shared between folks and are less likely to be associated with a singular name. Also, in biology folks are hesitant to use the term "law" as there is always the chance that someone finds something down the road that works differently....

[Genady]

55 minutes ago, CharonY said:

In addition to what swansont said, it also takes a while for something to establish itself as sufficiently robust before folks are even considering it a law. And with more and more detail work (as mentioned) it is going to become less likely.

Another thought is that scientific work (especially in the experimental realm) is increasingly collaborative and  a bit less elitist (as in having only few folks in a particular field). Findings are therefore more commonly shared between folks and are less likely to be associated with a singular name. Also, in biology folks are hesitant to use the term "law" as there is always the chance that someone finds something down the road that works differently....

What do you think was the last "law" in biology?

[CharonY]

I don't think that we use the term much and often in a fairly limited scope. For example, we tend to teach Mendelian laws of inheritance, but quite frequently then discuss how these laws are violated. In the 2000s a power law for biological networks was proposed and while it was a hot topic for years after years, rigorous statistical analyses suggest that they really are not valid.

There is also the so-called central dogma of molecular biology. In a way it was called that, because at that time folks assumed that this is how it worked, despite a lack of unequivocal evidence. But now with better understanding of the processes involved, the dogma is not that particularly useful anymore, except as a starting point (similar to Mendelian inheritance).

I think biology is as as whole less axiomatic and does not lend itself easily to something like laws. I think we are more comfortable using terms like principles, concepts or frameworks rather than claim a law, as almost always there is something, somewhere which violates them.

This often confuses laymen, who sometimes think of biological entities in an ordered Linnaean way. But in truth, biology tends to be messy.

[Genady]

15 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I don't think that we use the term much and often in a fairly limited scope. For example, we tend to teach Mendelian laws of inheritance, but quite frequently then discuss how these laws are violated. In the 2000s a power law for biological networks was proposed and while it was a hot topic for years after years, rigorous statistical analyses suggest that they really are not valid. I think biology is as as whole less axiomatic and does not lend itself easily to something like laws. I think we are more comfortable using terms like principles, concepts or frameworks rather than claim a law, as almost always there is something, somewhere which violates them.

This often confuses laymen, who sometimes think of biological entities in an ordered Linnaean way. But in truth, biology tends to be messy.

What do you think of Llinás's law - Wikipedia? I never heard of it before this discussion and don't know what its scientific status is.

[CharonY]

I have heard of the study way back and it might be taught in neurophys classes. However, if it was called a law because it is because it challenged some rather long-held assumptions. Yet with better technology and data we know that we have a larger cellular diversity than previously appreciated. The fact that they are not interchangeable is not something that I (think at least) nowadays would be surprised about. 

I may be wrong, but I think it has become more of a historic aspect rather than a law that sees any application in research or even teaching. I actually do not think that I even heard of it in neurology classes when I was studying (but then maybe I just forgot).

Edit:

Actually, while I have read the seminal paper back then, I do not recall that the conclusions were ever called a law. It may be just my ignorance, but I am wondering where the notion of it being called a law may come from. The wiki article does not really say.

[Genady]

15 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I have heard of the study way back and it might be taught in neurophys classes. However, if it was called a law because it is because it challenged some rather long-held assumptions. Yet with better technology and data we know that we have a larger cellular diversity than previously appreciated. The fact that they are not interchangeable is not something that I (think at least) nowadays would be surprised about. 

I may be wrong, but I think it has become more of a historic aspect rather than a law that sees any application in research or even teaching. I actually do not think that I even heard of it in neurology classes when I was studying (but then maybe I just forgot).

Edit:

Actually, while I have read the seminal paper back then, I do not recall that the conclusions were ever called a law. It may be just my ignorance, but I am wondering where the notion of it being called a law may come from. The wiki article does not really say.

Yes, I am wondering the same. Can't find an independent source of it.