LAWS OF NATURE
Becker contrasts the conception of a law of nature held by the medieval St Thomas Aquinas and a typical Enlightenment thinker Volnay, who defines natural law thus:
"the regular and constant order of facts by which God rules the universe; the order which his wisdom presents to the sense and reason of men, to serve them as an equal and common rule of conduct, and to guide them, without distinction of race or sect, towards perfection and happiness."
Volnay, quoted in Carl Becker, The heavenly city of the 18th century philosophers, New Haven & London, 1st ed 1932, Yale University Press Edition, p. 45.
So the notion of a law-governed nature is foundational.
In that sense the Enlightenment perception of nature as governed by laws can be represented as the flowering of the Scientific Revolution that had germinated in the previous century (see Hankins, Science & the Enlightenment, Ch 1.).
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HUME'S FOCUS MAKES CLEAR THE FOUNDATIONAL CHARACTER OF THE NOTION OF LAWS OF NATURE IN ENLIGHTENMENT THOUGHT |
The foundational character in Enlightenment thinking of laws comes out not only in the asseveration of it, as you encounter in the Encyclopeadists, but in the self-styled critics of established nostrums, such as Hume. The question he pursued was the nature of necessity, of what sense there was in thinking of a law of nature as somehow compelling natural objects to behave in particular ways. In concluding that they could not be thought of in this way and that they had better be thought of as statements of regularity he did not challenge their application. If we were to think of the laws of nature somewhat differently, they were nevertheless to be sought out and articulated in the same way.
He wasn't saying we should dispense with the concept of physical laws and approach science or the growth of knowledge with a different agenda, but that we should analyse what it is to be a law in a different way.