People tend to use ‘laws’ interchangeably with ‘principles’. In reality, there is an important difference between the two – as described in this short post.

Physics

A law encompasses a specific area – e.g. mechanics is fully described by Newton’s ‘laws’ – not Newton’s principles. A principle, on the other hand, encompasses ALL natural phenomenon – and is applicable to multiple domains. E.g. – Conservation of energy is a principle and can be applied to mechanics as easily as it can be applied to electricity and magnetism.

Mathematics

In mathematics, every theorem is essentially a principle. Theorems are universally valid – regardless of the domain in which they are originally defined. In that sense, mathematics doesn’t really have laws – just underlying principles that are applicable throughout the domain of mathematics as well as other sciences.

Summary

Laws only apply to specific scientific sub-domains  (laws of mechanics , laws of thermodynamics etc.) – whereas principles are applicably across domains to all of nature (principle of energy conservation,  principle of symmetry invariance etc.)

Anuj holds professional certifications in Google Cloud, AWS as well as certifications in Docker and App Performance Tools such as New Relic. He specializes in Cloud Security, Data Encryption and Container Technologies.

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Anuj Varma – who has written posts on Anuj Varma, Hands-On Technology Architect, Clean Air Activist.

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