Template:M intro design Nomological machine: Difference between revisions

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 The nomological machine might be something like this: a perfectly elastic one kilogramme ball, in a frictionless vacuum, to which we apply a force of one Newton, which therefore accelerates at 1 metre per second squared.
-The conditions in which this machine operates — zero friction, perfect elasticity, Euclidean spacetime geometry1, a non-inertial frame of reference — never prevail “in the wild”. In life, there is always friction, interference and inexactitude. We can never  be sure of our measurements — was it ''exactly'' a Newton? — whether the force was applied perfectly flush, nor whether the speedo was correctly calibrated. We we expect the prediction to be “near enough” but don’t expect accuracy to the micrometre.  It is too hard to calculate, and we don’t have the data in any case.
+The conditions in which this machine operates — zero friction, perfect elasticity, Euclidean spacetime geometry, a non-inertial frame of reference — never prevail “in the wild”. In life, there is always friction, interference and inexactitude. We can never  be sure of our measurements — was it ''exactly'' a Newton? — whether the force was applied perfectly flush, nor whether the speedo was correctly calibrated. We we expect the prediction to be “near enough” but don’t expect accuracy to the micrometre.  It is too hard to calculate, and we don’t have the data in any case.
 Newton’s neat formula, with all these unrealistic conditions, is a ''nomological machine''. If the observed universe does not seem to quite come up to brief, we blame shortcomings in our observations and the lack of conditions required to satisfy the model. The nomological machine is not properly represented.