Snail, I said I was not comfortable with the word "laws," but, as you rightly say, it's the word we commonly use, and my post represented no more than a tussle with the terminology, which is inadequate (as indeed was my tussle). When we talk about a law of nature we are not talking about that which must be obeyed but about that which we see consistently happening in our experiences of particular phenomena. So Newton's laws are descriptions. Such descriptions help to give structure to our scientific endeavours and enable predictions. Of course, we often get it wrong, even if we happen to be Newton. Getting it wrong and having to have another go is the beauty of science. Certainty and truth in scientific enquiry (oh, and how I leave myself open) are approachable asymptotically only. This joy in perennial uncertainty seems to be anathema in certain other fields of human endeavour which I won't go into just now.

We could be stuck with "laws," but we can always try to soften the blow.