Natural laws operate the same everywhere and at all times.
Hutton and Lyell's principle, and the necessary assumption behind all historical science. Without it no inference from present processes to past events is licensed.
In practice
- A geologist dates a canyon from erosion rates measured this decade, and the whole figure rests on the rate having held for six million years.
- An auditor projects a fraud pattern back over seven years of records on the assumption that the accounting system behaved then as it does now.
- Subject
- Science & Epistemology
- Essay
- Rules for weighing claims