Topic: Science/Jurisprudence
The title above poses a question that is more profound than it appears.
This well-known adage seems to be a trite statement about human social society. If we get right down to it, it would appear there is some truth to this statement. If laws were not created to be ultimately broken, then why assign penalties for infractions? The fact that the law-making authority, assesses a penalty for violating the law it establishes, is implicative that this authority expects it to be violated. To take it to a more fundamental plane, if there was no expectation of infraction of a law, it wouldn't need to be made. You see a sign that reads: No destruction or defilement of this property. Violators will be prosecuted. Including 5 years imprisonment and/or $10,000 fine. Now, here is a law that is just begging you to violate it. It tells you what'll happen and in its tone it kinda threatens you. A reader will almost certainly be given the impression, that before this law was promulgated, this property was defiled. We can generalize from this idea, to see that most if not all social laws are born to restrict previously engaged behavior. If this is the case, then it is probable that law or no law this behavior will happen again. Stated differently, attempts to curb behavior through defined rules, will invariably lead to cases where some persons will not abide by the rule. Thus, the promulgation of a law eventually will bring violations. In other words laws are made to be broken. Of course, the intent of this statement is not to say laws are made to cause people to break them. But, that is what happens. A clearer statement of this adage would be: If Laws are made, they will be at some time broken. In the original statement it sounds like one is saying: Yeah, I made a Law now go 'head break it! Break it, so I can penalize your law-breaking ass! Doesn't it sound like that? Like it's egging you on to break a law? And even this interpretation has a ring of truth. The very promulgation of a Law, any Law will evoke in some a desire to violate it. Also, such promulgations will be violated from negligence in some, or an honest mistake in others, still this amounts to a verification of the adage. Any law made will eventually be broken. The Hegelian dialectic is further proof that this is the case. In his system if we pose P, then there will most certainly come a not-P, and eventually a resolution P1.
What of the laws of science. Take the three laws of thermodynamics. Are they made to be broken? Well, you might assume:No! These are laws that have been arrived at by inductive study in physics, they apply continuously and are never broken. I must disagree. The laws of physics have been modified in the past when new data made them invalid. Thus, we are taken right back to the same aphorism. Though, the reason for a scientific law's violation doesn't spring from some recalcitrant deciding to not obey it. If a law like the three laws of thermodynamics are broken, it's a result of our imperfect knowledge. They were not really broken, but had to be modified. Still, the result is the same. A law established has been violated. And it was the very establishment of the law that gave rise to its change. Perhaps, it was the research of a brilliant mind, that was able to controvert it, or it was found to not apply in all instances of space and time, or it was stated imprecisely, etc. Again, a law was made, only to be broken.
Thus, Laws are made to be broken.
