Laws in Biology and History: Structural Similarities of Academic Disciplines

But why must we explain patterns? We could take disorder rather than order as the state in need of study, but, except when an instance of disorder is itself related to broader patterns, we don't. To say that patterns are interesting is to beg the question. One possible answer is to note that there are many possible patterns, the number increasing exponentially as the number of participating units increases. We then want to see why there is the existing pattern rather than the often immense number of other possibilities. However,