A somewhat different question in this area is whether there could be an event that was
both a consequence of a law of nature and also a violation of a law of nature. Such an
event would be, in a sense, a part of the natural order, because
end p.307
it would be the result of a law of nature operating in a natural context. There would be no
special supernatural interference or volition involved. But the event would also be a
violation of a different law of nature, one that also applied to that same natural context. In
other words, this would be a case in which there was some conflict or inconsistency in
the laws of nature: conformity with one law would involve the violation of another law.
Such a conflict might go unnoticed for a long time because the sort of context in which
the conflict occurred was rare. I do not know of any good reason for thinking that such a
conflict is impossible. But I will say no more about it here.
There might also be some question about whether the idea of a violation of a law of
nature is logically coherent.^4 This question is sometimes raised by calling attention to the
fact that a law of nature is often expressed by, or is at least thought to entail, some
universal proposition about the way things happen in the world. For example, it might be
thought that there is a law of nature to the effect that all crows are black. Or (perhaps
better) there are some fundamental laws of nature that entail or require that all crows be
black. And it might be thought that there is a law of nature to the effect that anyone who
dies remains dead thereafter, or that the proposition that all of the dead remain dead is a
consequence of some more fundamental laws of nature. The logical form of these
propositions (e.g., “All crows are black”) is that of a universal generalization that we can
state as
All A's are B's.
It seems easy to give sense to the notion of a violation of a proposition of that kind. A
counterexample would be such a violation. So, for example, the actual existence of a
white crow would be a counterexample to the universal proposition that all crows are
black. The logical form of the corresponding proposition, asserting the existence of a
crow that is not black, would be
There is an A that is not B.
So the white crow, incompatible with the generalization, would count as a violation of the
corresponding “law.” In the same way, a genuine resurrection from the dead would be a
counterexample to the generalization that states that all of the dead remain dead, and so
would be a violation of a law of nature.
These examples provide a plausible sense for a violation. Unfortunately, however, they
also entail that the corresponding universal generalizations are false. If there is a white
crow, for example, then it is false that all crows are black. And it would seem that a false
generalization could not constitute a genuine law of nature. A genuine law of nature
must, somehow or other, be true. Nor could a genuine law of nature entail a false
generalization. Of course, something that was mistakenly believed to be a law of nature
might entail a falsehood. But that fact
end p.308