Which is the most important theory/law in science?

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I think Le Chatelier's principle is highly important in chemistry, so as to be able to determine the shift in the reaction equilibria when either additional reactants or products are added, energy supplied changes, pressure changes, etc. Anyone care to argue actual science?

I'd actually side with Daniel Dennett, that the most profoundly impactful theory in science is the theory of evolution. Evolution has very deeply changed how people view their world, and impacted some modern views of psychology, sociology, economics, computer science, philosophy, etc, and of course become the dominant underpinning view in biology. This is something that few theories end up doing. I mean, this isn't to say that the list isn't impressive. Newton's formulations of physics inspired the notion of a Newtonian world-machine, and Newtonian mechanics is still relevant for a lot of engineering purposes. Special relativity overthrew past views of time. Many of the electrical rules are essential for harnessing electricity, however, I doubt we could work with just one of them.

I mean, out of all of these "rules", evolution is one of the few paradigms, and I think it is one of the most powerful paradigms. It describes the emergence of order from rules.

the universe was not created in order for people to understand it, and so all "laws" that people derive from their observations are simply mechanisms for their own evolution and perpetuity.
no "laws" are required for the universe to happen as it does.
the development of "laws" is an attempt by human minds to ascribe "pigeon holes" to a reality that is in infinite resolution.

i just thought recently what i wrote above, but usually i think hard about the tiniest of things in life (zero priority things), so i am not saying that i am going to to cease my investigation into the microcosmic world i live in, but another part of me realizes that no life can ever understand eternal attributes like eternal time or eternal design.

i wonder sometimes that even if i had 100 times my intelligence, would i ever be able to solve with eternal accuracy, the generic mechanism of reality?

i know the answer is "no" .

i just do whatever takes my fancy while i am alive.



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Right, I hate the notion of a "law" too, and frankly, I don't see this in the:

Hypothesis-->Theory-->Law notion of things either. I just think that we have hypothesis and theory, with a law being an outmoded term that held during more optimistic days.

K-O-ing Chaos topic

True, the world would keep on turning, if we did nothing more. And yet I think the amazing minds who came up with the theories and laws mentioned by IP wanted to understand the world, if only "for their own evolution and perpetuity." Probing minds want to know, and in doing so, in my opinion, made the world more complex, and changed the way we view the earth and the universe.

The most important? Many of the earlier theories made the later ones possible. I agree with AG's analysis.

Faraday's law of induction is the principle used in all power plants producing alternating current electricity from the kinetic motion of a conductor through a magnetic field.

Kirchhoff's laws are used in all complicated electrical circuits. Same as Ohm's law, which is generally used in all circuits. I mean, society as we know it could likely not exist without many of the theories you put forward.

Frankly, Newton's laws are probably the runner up to evolutionary theory, if not actually the winner. I still think that evolution wins though because evolution has impacted so many other fields with the emergence of attempts to apply evolutionary logic to those other fields and evolution is still an ongoing topic of research, so it has proven very fruitful in a direct manner, not only that, but as I said before, evolution has transformed the way we think about things, and elements of evolution are relevant in much of philosophy, from epistemology to ethics, from philosophy of mind to philosophy of religion and certainly evolution has it's place in anthropology and sociology. At best, most of the other theories just land into metaphysics, with Newton helping determinism, and the theory of relativity altering our perception of time.

You are right about the above laws, Kirchhoff's and Ohm's, being practically the basis for society (in terms of how we operate with electronics). But I disagree about these and the other laws just landing into metaphysics while "evolutionary logic" is considered to be more useful. The logic of it may or may not be useful, but the other laws, including both special and general relativity, have direct application to modern technology. Yes, say "antibiotics" if you wish for a real useful application of survival of the fittest, but I mean electronics, machinery, vehicles, computers; these wonderful things which lend such credence to science that the popularity of evolution piggybacks on the success of.

Honestly, those laws you mention, Kirchhoff's and Ohm's law, are not likely to land even in metaphysics. Additionally, I was pointing to philosophy there. Evolution has the most philosophical ramifications out of the entire list by my reckoning. Not only that, but evolution, while being very important in biology, particularly genetics, it also has great import for the social sciences, and the idea has even gotten currency in computer science as a model.

I mean, if you mean "electronics, machinery, vehicles, computers" then no single theory on your list can ever create these things. So, holding evolution to the standard of creating a level of technology that no single response is responsible for seems sort of silly. As I've said before, the only competitor is Newton's theories, and his ideas don't lead to electronics, machinery, vehicles, or computers, but rather just allow certain engineering problems to be solved much better, or solved period(but not even the more advanced mechanical issues though), and even then, people have done plenty of engineering before Newton.

As I said in my first post, evolution is not just a theory, it is a paradigm-shifting idea, and that's one of those things that makes it so "important" out of that list.

No offense. This is a bit like asking whether the brain or the heart is more important.

Neither. Charles Darwin proved it was the sex organs.

None of the above...Murphy's

The TOE! (If there is one)

But for currently discovered laws, I'm gonna go with Einstein's, since it seems to have the most impact on the entire universe. (Along with Newton's, I guess)

I would say the conservation laws; conservation of momentum, angular momentum and mass-energy. Right after that I would nominate the second law of thermodynamics.

I distinguish between laws and theories. The conservation of momentum holds in both classical physics and in relativity theory.

ruveyn

Probably the most important law is that it's possible to have laws. In other words that the universe acts in ways we can comprehend. At least, so far.

^^ i vote for what Sand said