If laws merely describe things in the world, then it seems that there is no reason for a particular object to behave according to a particular law the next moment.
If laws govern/order/command reality in some way or if there is something inherent to an object (lets call it a “power”) that governs how the object behaves according to a law, we now have an explanation for why an object continues to move or behave according to a certain pattern.
Does this mean that if laws or these lawlike causal powers are actually doing things or causing things rather than being merely descriptive, there is an explanatory advantage to the former?
EDIT: It seems that most people are misunderstanding what I mean here by laws of nature, even though the philosophical literature makes it clear as to what they mean. I am not referring to our human attempts to understanding these laws, but whatever the fundamental laws of nature actually are, irrespective of our knowledge. Some philosophers think that these fundamental laws, whether we know them or not, govern the universe. Others think that even if we could fully describe all the laws in the universe, they don’t actually govern anything. The question is if the former idea has greater explanatory power than the latter.
