1. The document discusses the term "ceteris paribus" which is a Latin phrase meaning "other things being equal". It explains that ceteris paribus laws or statements acknowledge that predictions and causal relations can fail or be abolished by intervening factors, even if they are usually accurate under normal or expected conditions.
2. It notes that ceteris paribus is key to scientific inquiry as scientists seek to control independent variables and screen out perturbing factors. Ceteris paribus laws are more common in special sciences like biology and economics, whose laws typically hold in normal conditions but have exceptions, unlike fundamental physics which aims for universal laws.
3. The document asks what the term "ceter