lawlike generalization also called nomological (or nomic), a generalization that, unlike an accidental generalization, possesses nomic necessity or counterfactual force. Compare (1) ‘All specimens of gold have a melting point of 1,063o C’ with (2) ‘All the rocks in my garden are sedimentary’. (2) may be true, but its generality is restricted to rocks in my garden. Its truth is accidental; it does not state what must be the case. (1) is true without restriction. If we write (1) as the conditional ‘For any x and for any time t, if x is a specimen of gold subjected to a temperature of 1,063o C, then x will melt’, we see that the generalization states what must be the case. (1) supports the hypothetical counterfactual assertion ‘For any specimen of gold x and for any time t, if x were subjected to a temperature of 1,063o C, then x would melt’, which means that we accept (1) as nomically necessary: it remains true even if no further specimens of gold are subjected to the required temperature. This is not true of (2), for we know that at some future time an igneous rock might appear in my garden. Statements like (2) are not lawlike; they do not possess the unrestricted necessity we require of lawlike statements. Ernest Nagel has claimed that a nomological statement must satisfy two other conditions: it must deductively entail or be deductively entailed by other laws, and its scope of prediction must exceed the known evidence for it. See also CAUSAL LAW. R.E.B.