Where Do the Laws of Nature Come From?

mlimber writes "The NYTimes science section has up an interesting article discussing the nature of scientific laws. It comes partly in reply to physicist Paul Davies, whose recent op-ed in same paper lit up the blogosphere and solicited flurry of reader responses to the editorial page. It asks, 'Are [laws of nature] merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?' The current article proceeds to survey different views on the matter. The author seems to be poking fun at himself by quoting Richard Feynman's epigram, 'Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.'"

Fallacy of equivocation

[TheNarrator]

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

        A feather is light.
        What is light cannot be dark.
        Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

Nature has Laws.
All Laws are made for the purpose of governing.
Nature has laws that are made for the purpose of governing.

Notice that the first and second time the term "Law" is used it has a different meaning.

Re:intelligent design isn't

[$RANDOMLUSER]

"But officer, I wasn't doing anywhere near 299,792,458 miles per second!"

What, do you work for NASA that you don't know the difference between imperial and metric? That's meters per second, not miles per second.

No not really.

[LWATCDR]

"My personal experience was walking on hot coals that were hot enough to melt an aluminum can. I walked for 40 feet through the oak coals and not a burn on my feet.

Further use of intent is if you wanted to measure light as a particle then it would be a particle. If you wanted light to be a wave then it would be so.

These types of things work from an interdimensional energy that science has not yet grasped. Eventually they will from observation of things like firewalks or handling hot iron without being burned and understanding that intent is the power behind things occurring.
"
No. You didn't bet burned because you where walking and your feet where dry. Your feet didn't stay in contact with the coals long enough for the heat to be conducted to them.
Coals are actually pretty poor conductors of heat.
Had they put a steel plate over the coals and let it reach the same temperature you would have gotten badly burned.
It wasn't your intent, magic, or some power. It was good old thermal dynamics.

Laws of Nature

[PitaBred]

Do they govern nature or just describe it?

Yes. Was the question really THAT hard?

Form an opinion and move on

[Thelasko]

If it wasn't for the Discovery Institute trying to pass off Intelligent Design as a science, I would say that is what I believe. I believe God created the laws and made order out of chaos. Humans merely discovered and described these laws. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. But this is a belief, not knowledge, and is in no way provable. If it was provable it wouldn't be religion. God is beyond the capacity of human knowledge by definition. That is why we (at least in the US) separate science from religion (in part) it sorts hard facts from the beliefs so one does not detract from the other. It leaves each individual with the opportunity to make up his or her own mind about the existence of a higher power. I encourage everyone to do so and move on. The scientific community is no place for such a discussion unless someone can make a provable hypothesis.

Re:Law of Gravity

[GrahamCox]

Why would the universe choose a round whole number for its law of gravity? That's just way too weird.

What whole round number would that be then? Don't forget it's humans that choose the numbers - sometimes we choose certain numbers as the basis of systems (e.g. SI) to make them come out to whole numbers for many practical problems - this reduces errors when doing the arithmetic. But often other phenomena don't fit into a neat system of whole numbers and we are left with awkward constants. Nearly every real physical constant you care to name is not a round number, unless the "system" was designed around it. 1 second equals 1000 milliseconds, how weird is that!!!!

Re:i think its clear

[syousef]

a^2 + b^2 = c^2 only applies for Euclidean geometry. In spherical geometry Pythagoras does not apply and angles of a triangle don't add to 180

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem [wikipedia.org]