We are excited to invite you to our next local chapter event, co-sponsored by the de Vries Institute for Global Faculty Development. Dr. Jeffrey Koperski will be presenting a public lecture titled “What is a natural law?” (based on his recent book, Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature).

WHEN: Saturday, March 18, 2022 at 3:30 pm
WHERE: Chapel Sanctuary, Calvin University, 3201 Burton Street SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546

Livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/@CalvinUniversity/streams

Lecture Abstract
One cannot go far in physics without running into a law of nature, and any college student can point to examples in textbooks.  That familiarity leaves a fundamental question unanswered, however: What precisely is a law of nature?  Do the laws govern natural events?  Or are laws nothing more than the equations themselves?  In this talk, we consider the three main answers to these questions in the philosophy of science literature.  In the end, I will argue that the early-modern natural philosophers who first introduced the idea were largely correct: The laws of nature are divine decrees.

Speaker Biography
Jeffrey Koperski is professor of philosophy at Saginaw Valley State University, Michigan.  He has a Ph.D. (Philosophy) from Ohio State University and a B.E.E. (Electrical Engineering) from the University of Dayton.  His areas of expertise are philosophy of science and philosophy of religion.  While most of his early work focused on philosophical questions in physics, his more recent publications deal with issues at the intersection of philosophy, science, and religion.  He is an editorial board member for Philosophy Compass and has published articles in Philosophy of Science, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, among others.  His two books are titled The Physics of Theism: God, Physics, and the Philosophy of Science (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015) and Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Routledge, 2020).