Scientific law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A scientific law, or empirical law, is a general principle that is very well supported by evidence such as experimental results and observational data. Typically scientific laws are limited sets of rules that have a well documented history for successfully predicting the outcomes of experiments and observations.
The concept of a scientific law is closely related to the concept of a scientific theory. Typically scientific laws are more limited sets of rules for making predictions about the world than scientific theories.
The physical sciences involve a set of scientific laws, specifically called physical laws. However, the biological sciences also have scientific laws, such as Mendelian inheritance and the Hardy-Weinberg principle found in genetics. Social sciences also contain a number of principles, also called "laws" that are taken as granted in a particular field, though the use of the term "scientific law" is not ordinarily applied outside the natural sciences.
