Not sure if I’m reinventing the wheel here, but recently I used a variation of David Hume’s is-ought problem in response to a debate opponent who claimed that the laws of nature were prescriptive, as opposed to descriptive. In ethics, the is-ought problem states that we cannot derive a moral prescription out of a description — how things are does not mean that is the way they should be.
Applied to science, empirical generalizations (laws of nature) which describe how nature operates do not imply that nature must function in such a way in that these laws cannot be violated. Simply because nature is a certain way does it mean that it must be that way. Just as is does not equal ought in ethics, is does not equal must in science. Thus, laws of nature can only be descriptive.
