Where Do the Laws of Nature Come From? 729
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.'"
i think its clear (Score:5, Insightful)
intelligent design isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who thought this sentence smacked of Intelligent Design proposition?
See, I find no conflict between science and spirituality; I find a LOT of conflict between fans of science and fans of specific flavors of spirituality (religions). The Yankees and Red Sox don't really spend a lot of time foaming at the mouth about their opponents, but the rest of the folks in the stadiums sure do. If spirituality offers guidance as to WHY we're here, then science attempts to explain HOW. Either question can be ignored and you'll still live, honestly. Both questions may be answered and the answers may or may not satisfy you. The only difference that I see, which puts me in the science camp, is that scientists at least try to prove themselves wrong.
./brain-explode (Score:1, Insightful)
If there's no intent behind it, is there really a difference between the two with respect to laws? I don't think so. A description of what something does and what it actually does, as long as the description is correct, are the same.
I've yet to meet a scientist who doesn't care where they come from, but most scientists are smart enough to tackle only problems they think can handle, and leave the rest on the back burner. No science is advanced enough for any but the most deluded scientist to think they can answer that question.
God (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if you're not very religious, if you sat down and tried to imagine what God could possibly be, or what function He/She/It could possibly have, I think this one would be rather high on the list.
Damn good article about faith... (Score:5, Insightful)
I particularly liked the card game of bridge analogy and the author's conclusion where he stated:We don't know, and might never know, if science has overbid its hand. When in doubt, confronted with the complexities of the world, scientists have no choice but to play their cards as if they can win, as if the universe is indeed comprehensible. That is what they have been doing for more than 2,000 years, and they are still winning.
Interestingly enough, as a person of religious faith, I agree: scientists are winning the knowledge acquisition game faster than they ever have before -- and my faith is not threatened by the progress of knowledge at all for a simple reason: would it make sense for a designer (AKA a God) to organize/make a universe that doesn't follow comprehensible rules? or that this group of sentient beings known as humans can't set about on a centuries long search to understand what those rules are?
Because what I reject is the limitation imposed by atheistic scientists that the answer to that first argued question must be presupposed towards randomness, not design.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeesh (Score:5, Insightful)
Four different forces, superstrings, antineutrinos, strange quarks, neutralinos, gluons, and 26 dimensions.
The laws of physics are clearly the result of a bureaucracy.
There's a basic frustration in physics today that things are just too complicated at the bottom. There's a classic comment by I. I. Rabi, "Who ordered that?", made when the muon was discovered. The muon is a "heavy electron", the first elementary particle discovered that doesn't appear in ordinary atoms. Muons didn't seem to be necessary to physics, but there they were. That was the end of simple subatomic physics, and nobody has been able to put the mess back in the box since.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently this is a useless question since it is the philosophy of science. I have to wonder why smart people think they are smart about everything. Isn't science supposed to have rigor and thorough analysis, and if so, wouldn't that mean rigor and analysis about itself? Theories of metaphysics (not the new age shit that word is associated with, but about fundamental stuff about physics or science), epistemology (what we know and how we know it), and language all inform our science and scientific thought. Failing to understand that is a failure to understand the very activity a scientist is engaged in.
Re:i think its clear (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i think its clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternate universes (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it wouldn't make any difference to an animal, but I have psychological investment in the existential.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if they change fast enough, it could become apparent that the equations and constants we've been using for 200 years now are no longer accurate (with respect to the results they used to produce). That would be a pretty big flag I'd think.
=Smidge=
We don't really know, yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:intelligent design isn't (Score:1, Insightful)
conservation laws prohibit this (Score:4, Insightful)
You bet there is. All the conservation laws (e.g. conservation of energy, or of momentum) rely on the fact that physical laws do not change with time or position in space. If there was a "gradual change" in physical laws, e.g. if the constant in Coulomb's Law or Newton's Law changed slowly from position to position, or over time, then energy and momentum would not be conserved.
And, of course, the fact that energy and momentum are conserved has been verified experimentally in excruciating detail.
Re:Damn good article about faith... (Score:4, Insightful)
Our laws are wrong. We might never know what laws would most accurately describe the universe.
"would it make sense for a designer (AKA a God) to organize/make a universe that doesn't follow comprehensible rules?"
Why should the rules be comprehensible? Sure, we've comprehended some of it, but there's really no guarantee that our brains will figure it all out. Our brains certainly can't grasp more than 3 spatial dimensions.
Also, why do you believe the actions of a deity have to make sense? A lot of things in the real world don't make sense to us. Common sense has been a regular failure at analyzing more than the most basic scenarios.
"or that this group of sentient beings known as humans can't set about on a centuries long search to understand what those rules are?"
Yes, I could see it being true that our brains - originally developed for hunting strategy and making weapons - would not be able to handle revealing the fundamental laws of nature. Then again, as I said, common sense regularly fails.
"Because what I reject is the limitation imposed by atheistic scientists that the answer to that first argued question must be presupposed towards randomness, not design."
I don't think the word "randomness" means what you think it means. If you are talking about evolution, it certainly does not progress at random. It is indeed nearly impossible for a bunch of particles to fly together and form a 747. But then, that is not what evolution is.
anyone who knows anything about science knows (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a couple pearls I've picked up:
"Science is the attempt to come up with systematic, coherent and useful descriptions of how the natural world works."
- Chris Mack, litho guru
Science always deals with models of reality, not the ultimate nature of reality.
- http://www.lightandmatter.com/ [lightandmatter.com]
Incorrect definition of religious faith (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Damn good article about faith... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Philosophy of science is crucial (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i think its clear (Score:3, Insightful)
"Intent" for an organism with a decent number of ganglia is an electrochemical series of interactions that drive the motorneural aspects of said organism's body.
Re:Incorrect definition of religious faith (Score:5, Insightful)
Your belief in the reality of these characters' existence, let alone of their accounts or beliefs, is what can be characterized as "belief without evidence". All religious stories contain characters with first-hand accounts. The problem is that people can also make up stories containing characters with first-hand accounts.
Re: Incorrect definition of religious faith (Score:2, Insightful)
Not exactly on topic but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Them: You say you don't believe in god because you haven't seen him... but you believe in electrons, don't you, and you've never seen them?
Me: No. I don't believe in them.
Them: You don't believe in electrons?
Me: Like I said... I've never seen one. All I know is that, if I pretend that electrons exist, then I'm able to make all kinds of predictions that I can see. It might turn out that there aren't electrons at all. The universe might be set up completely another way... and our current set of "laws" manage to give us the same set of predictions. So, I only believe in electrons long enough to build a television set, so to speak.
As a scientist, I should be ready to abandon any of these laws when they start failing to predict what I'm seeing... no matter how well it worked up to that point (see "Ultraviolet Catastrophe").
It's like we've been invited to play a board game. We haven't been told the rules... but, by trial and error, we've managed to deduce enough about the gameplay that we're able to get along in the game fairly well. However, I doubt that the rules that we've deduced actually match the ones printed in the book that came with the game.
Platonism, Laws, and Necessary Truths (Score:4, Insightful)
Take, for example, the Law of Non-Contradiction. This is a law of logic, you might even say THE law of logic: it says simply that for any proposition P (a proposition being what is expressed by a sentence in a given sense and context), either P or not-P. That's an exclusive OR there, so it's one or the other but not both. This is not just a law of language, of our way of expressing things, as Platonists often portray their opponents as claiming. Those who believe this law (which is almost, but not quite, everybody, Platonists and others alike) aren't just believing that, due to the arbitrary rules of all of our languages, it doesn't make any sense to say things like "both P and not-P" or "neither P nor not-P". They're saying that, completely independent of anybody speaking or even thinking anything, whatever state of affairs is described by "P" either obtains exactly as described, or it does not obtain exactly as described.
This is a necessary truth; one of the most, if not THE most, fundamental of them. (All other laws of truth-functional logic can be reduced to this one law, really). Necessary truths could aptly be described as laws, in the same sense as laws of nature: necessary truths are true everywhere always and there could not possibly be a universe where they were not true.
Now tell me, where is this fundamental law written (aside from our logic textbooks)? What is it that makes it true? Do we really need to posit some abstract metaphysical entity in Plato's heaven which is the ideal form of the Law of Non-Contradiction, in virtue of which our utterances of that law are true? Or can't we just say that it is necessarily true? Why must such laws be inscribed somewhere in order for them to be laws? This (along with the strawman "nominalism" that Platonists object to) is the metaphysical counterpart to the ethical position that things are only good or bad because someone (God, society, etc) says so, which completely destroys the idea of absolute, universal, and non-arbitrary standards of justice (justice dealing with duties or obligations, obligations relating to goods the same way that necessities relate to truths). Why must things be either decreed by heaven (whether there is a God there or just "Ideas") or by popular convention to be true? Cannot truth stand on its own?
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternate universes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:probably impossible by definition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Alternate universes (Score:4, Insightful)
Though I suppose any change that was observable on such a scale would also be able to be proven if the data were still available and accurate.
Re:intelligent design isn't (Score:3, Insightful)
Completely wrong-headed statement. Any laws which have been established in any particular discipline are taught to students immediately. They're used and discussed endlessly as the basis for all kinds of problem-solving decisions. In physics, for example, the law of conservation of momentum has been verified a million more times than Darwin has incited insecurity. Anyone who wishes to do so can easily search for an example in which that law is violated; no single exception has ever arisen.
In other words, laws become common sense as the result of observations -- as obvious to anyone engaged in a field as the outcome of unsafe driving is obvious to seasoned drivers.
Re:Incorrect definition of religious faith (Score:1, Insightful)
Here's the problem. There are two kinds of information:
1. Objective: Shared by all members of the same reality you inhabit.
2. Subjective: Only in the observer's own mind. (i.e.: Beauty in the eye of the beholder.)
Objective evidence can be used to determine the nature of the reality we share. Subjective evidence can be used to communicate your own personal state. Examples go back to childhood:
A: Vanilla is the best ice-cream flavor ever!
B: Nuh-Uh! Chocolate is!
A: Is not!
B: Is too!
Vanilla may be the best ice-cream flavor to A (subjective). Chocolate may be the best ice-cream flavor to B (subjective). But there is no one (objective) "best" ice-cream flavor.
Often our thinking is confused, because we'll tend to pull multiple subjective accounts and try to use it as objective evidence. For example, in a courtroom, we ask several witnesses. If those witnesses all agree and state that X pulled the trigger and shot Y, then X goes to jail. Those witnesses provide their subjective accounts, and we *infer* objective evidence from it. In some cases (like our courtroom drama), it's the best we can do.
Science comes along and demands pure objective evidence. Take any sane individual who can follow instructions, if he/she follows instructions X, that individual will observe Y. It doesn't matter who the individual is; that is, no objective evidence may be personal. To summarize:
- Subjective evidence cannot be used to determine the nature of reality, any more than it can determine the "best" ice-cream flavor.
- Objective evidence cannot be personal in nature; it is observer independent.
Whether or not "God" exists is a question about the nature of our reality, and therefore requires objective evidence, which cannot be "personal evidence".
Thank you for your kind consideration of my thesis.
PS> *Chocolate* is the best ice-cream flavor.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:1, Insightful)
Why so harsh? Hmm, is it just me or should our "scientists" being asking questions and not just towing the line of the corporate money they are all pimping for?
Yeah, I was working in the "scientific" field for a while until I got bored with the butt kissing that I witnessed of big corporate money.
Where are the scientists that actually _ask_ questions, regardless of topic? Ask a question about a topic that even _might_ have a Christian connection and watch the "scientists" drop it like a whore with crabs.
Then watch them all scurry to get the scraps from some corporate funded "study".
What crap. I use to want to be a "scientist". I went to school to be a "scientist". Then I became a "scientist". Then I quit, because of the crap.
I am much happier now. I still hold dear my teachings and thoughts. I just no longer will accept money from a "corporate sponsor" to give some crappy @ssed opinion.
How can "scientists" come to 2 conclusions about global warming? Show two groups of "scientists" the _same_ data, ask them to evaluate it and I can tell you the outcome. It all depends on who funded them.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:5, Insightful)
Buddha was asked a number of questions by a wise philosopher of the time, such as "Is there a soul," "Is there a God" and "Is there life after death?" Buddha refused to answer because the answers aren't important. If they are important to you, there is a more basic question you should be asking first, which is, "Why is it important for me to believe that I know the answers?"
You will find the answer to this is always some variant of, "Because I'm afraid of dying and knowing the right things will help keep me from ceasing to exist." So the question becomes, why am I afraid of dying? And the answer is almost always something along the lines of, "Because I see myself as fundamentally separate from the Universe, and when I die, I'm gone."
This is based on the fact that mind has privileged access to some of it's own internal state. No one else seems to know our internal worlds, and so we fear that when we die, those worlds will be lost. Worse yet, as we believe we are the only ones who can put them in their proper context, when we die, they might be misinterpreted.
Well, buck up. You aren't separate from the universe. You are not a subject, observing the objects. You aren't a little man sitting in your head looking out through your eyes and hearing through your ears. The sense of self is just another sense, just another track in the recording. No one is listening because there aren't any such things as individuals to observe.
Is that confusing or upsetting? Then you are stuck in dualistic thinking, and will always be, in some sense, scared of death. If you can let go of dualism and realize that there is no subjective observer separate from the objects observed, but that observation still exists, then you will be free and it won't matter one bit whether we are living in a simulation, or even whether there is a God, a soul, or an afterlife.
Re:i think its clear (Score:3, Insightful)
The alternative is to state what every scientist will, that we do not have to have the full picture for any given theory to be useful. Thus far, our study of biological neural systems, as incomplete as it may be, shows nothing other than electrochemical transmissions. But unfortunately for some anti-intellectual anti-science fearmongers, the need to denigrate that which they fear or don't understand will force them to take moronic positions, commit major logical fallacies and outright warp words to fit their notions.
Sorry, but if that's the author's view, then he's either a liar or a lunatic, and I can't think that you're very much better.
Re:Yeesh (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that one day we'll find out that there's a very good explanation, but I'll be darned if I have any idea what it is.
Re:Incorrect definition of religious faith (Score:3, Insightful)
As the other responder said: doubt. I don't accept your "evidence", because your evidence is not compelling on its own, and certainly not compelling when lumped together with all the other stories - religious and otherwise - that have existed over the millennia.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no real choice, because there is no stable point that is outside the system of feedback loops and can influence them without being influenced. There is only cause and effect.
Re:Incorrect definition of religious faith (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where do Laws of Nature come from? (Score:3, Insightful)
I get that you were joking, but I suspect it's more like where do small rocks come from?
The two options are accretion (collection and bonding of smaller particles or concepts to gether to form a greater whole) or disintergration (breaking apart of a larger whole - only fragments remain).
Re:conservation laws prohibit this (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe you'd try and drag poor dear Emmy into something so.....applied.
Gentlemen, this is *not* a bathhouse.
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent [kfs.org]
It saves a lot of effort when arguing with the religious types - "transcendent entities are necessarily outside the realm of logic, so I'll not discuss your particular version of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, thankyou."
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Shalom :P
different units (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alternate universes (Score:3, Insightful)
Meditation can also give you some degree of control over not just the emotions, but the sensations themselves. The mind can learn to dissociate from the sensory inputs.
I think most Buddhists gain pleasure from as many things as they can, including breathing and just being. Most Buddhists I have known have been actively engaged in making the world a better place. Some have specifically told me that meditation helps them focus and do more with their limited time to help the world. I think one of the long term goals of Buddhism is to build a Utopian world, because that would reduce suffering, and help people towards enlightenment. Easier to worry about enlightenment on a full belly, after all.
I try to manage positive and negative emotions. It's easy to become attached to positive feelings, and this does more than create negative feelings in their absence. It creates a compulsion to work for those positive feelings. I relish the good feelings but try not to let them rule me, and motivate myself based on what I believe rather than what I feel.
But I don't try to control my emotions, per se. Buddhism has a phrase for that, "Like trying to stir the dirt out of muddy water." if the water is muddy, leave it alone and the dirt will settle out. Trying to control feelings means you are placing value judgments on the moment.
Basically, your value judgments made in the past are your past life karma. That karma determines your present life, the present moment, Meaning, for example, I have chosen to feel negatively in past situations. A similar situation arises. I am predisposed to feel negatively about it, and if I don't check that impulse, it only reinforces things. The next time a similar situation comes around, I will have slightly less freedom of choice in how to view it. In the "karma metaphor," my choices in my past lives (individual moments) determine my present life karma, and my choices in my present life determine my future karma.