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"unless": a word as big as "if"

Many or all so-called absolute laws of nature involve the word "unless": take inertia for example.

Something to look into: whether laws describing particles use "unless"; whether one can infer from the scientific description of the behavior of these particles in a non-atomic state (e.g., before atoms and molecues were formed)... whether one can infer from that description the way these particles will interact as parts of the wholes that we call atoms, etc. In other words, the question of whether atoms have emergent properties, the necessary conditions of which are the pre-atomic properties of their respective particles, but with properties that exceed the sum of the properties of their parts.

If my hunch about the latter is correct, then "unless" might be used to describe particles at a level of generality that includes both the non-atomic and atomic state (i.e., they behave the way they do in the non-atomic state unless...in the atomic state).

My further hunch is that every law describes how things act unless a higher-level influence is involved. Very non-reductive.

(Hey, Tim, when you're back from yer honeymoon, please, please do comment! )

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