Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy

Some philosophers think physical explanations stand on their own: what happens, happens because things have the properties they do. Others think that any such explanation is incomplete: what happens in the physical world must be partly due to the laws of nature. Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy examines the debate between these views from Descartes to Hume.
Ott argues that the competing models of causation in the period grow out of the scholastic notion of power. On…