Natural Law

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Natural laws may be thought of as rules of ecology:

These are actually laws regulating a process by which life is sustained by the constant and integrated function of each active facet of the biological community in an equilibrium maintained by physical, chemical and biological forces operating over time in precise places, referred to as habitats.

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Rules of the ecological game

Rule number

code

Laws of Ecology (meaning)

Laws of Thermodynamics:

1

 connectivity

You can never do merely one thing

You cannot win

2

 place

Everything has to go somewhere

You are bound to lose

3

 repercussions

Impact is related to human affluence multiplied by numbers of actions.

You can't get out of the game

The biological game's description

Historically, natural law refers to a body of understanding that humans derive their status in the order of nature, by the fact that humankind is created in the image of God. In Christian tradition, based on Greek philosophy, humankind shares with the divine world the capacity for reason and for understanding logic.

For example, Galileo held that "God speaks in the language of mathematics," thus revealing the rationality of the cosmos. In the Arabic tradition from which Greek ideas of natural law were transferred to European thinkers, the belief is that the material universe is a reflection of the orderly mind of God. The term for this thoughtful creation of which we --as a species-- are a rational part is "I'lm."

In Arabic "I'lm" refers to knowledge.

The knowledge derived from nature is underlain by "natural laws" that -- as John Donne suggested, govern human and all other relations.

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*

Laws of Thermodynamics actually restated:

  1. Matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
  2. Each time energy is transformed there is a net buildup of heat (infrared radiation).
  3. There is an eventual limitation to the value of heat exchange for living things (death).

The first law was initially described -- based on evidence by Antoine Lavoisier in the 18th century.

The second law was articulated by Lord Kelvin and others in the 19th century.

The third law is the rational and deductive consequence of the second.

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