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"Laws" of Nature

#1
Yazata Offline
I think that the whole idea of 'Laws of Nature' remains logically and conceptually problematic.

In practice, the 'Laws of nature' seem to be assumptions.  According to the stereotypical "Scientific Method", one makes assumptions/hypotheses, produces predictions based on their observational implications, and then makes the observations to see if the predictions hold true. If they do, the assumption is considered 'confirmed'. Never mind that whole procedure seems to be an illustration of the elementary logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.

If a hypothesis receives enough confirmation (nobody really knows how much that needs to be) and probably more importantly, if the rest of the scientific community adopts it as a given in its science education process, then it somehow becomes imagined as pertaining universally and necessarily and is imagined as a Law. So not only does the problem of induction arise, there also seems to be a large sociological component to whatever it is that's happening.

I'm inclined to think that historically, 'Laws of nature' are worryingly close to being Christian theology translated into science-speak.

We have 'God', the universe's ancient Mesopotamian King, whose Word creates whole new realities, whose word is Law. And we have the vision of a universe created by God's Word, subject to those Laws that the Lord has spoken into being, just as the people of Akkad were subject to the law spoken into being by their Lord, the King of Akkad.

In the early years of the scientific revolution, those who were to become known as 'scientists' imagined their task as uncovering and elucidating God's unvarying and eternal Word as expressed in Laws of nature. Isaac Newton was very open about thinking that way. Even the free-thinkers of the time, the 17th and 18th century Deists, imagined a God that created the universe and whose handiwork is visible in its order and design, even as they expressed skepticism about the revealed religion of the churches and their scriptures. For many intellectuals in those years, science was probably the most direct way to, as Einstein later put it, 'read the mind of God'.  So the whole idea that nature's Laws are universal, necessary and invariant was simply assumed as a given.

Today atheists have abandoned belief in God, but they still believe devoutly in the 'Laws of nature' that the non-existent God supposedly spoke into existence. (Kinda like the Cheshire cat's grin in 'Alice', the echo of God's disappearance...) So as much as the atheists like to insist that science and religion are incompatible, one could make an argument that science as presently conceived makes most sense in the context of religion.
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#2
C C Offline
(Sep 12, 2016 06:33 PM)Yazata Wrote: I think that the whole idea of 'Laws of Nature' remains logically and conceptually problematic. In practice, the 'Laws of nature' seem to be assumptions.  According to the stereotypical "Scientific Method", one makes assumptions/hypotheses, produces predictions based on their observational implications, and then makes the observations to see if the predictions hold true. If they do, the assumption is considered 'confirmed'. Never mind that whole procedure seems to be an illustration of the elementary logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. If a hypothesis receives enough confirmation (nobody really knows how much that needs to be) and probably more importantly, if the rest of the scientific community adopts it as a given in its science education process, then it somehow becomes imagined as pertaining universally and necessarily and is imagined as a Law. So not only does the problem of induction arise, there also seems to be a large sociological component to whatever it is that's happening.


Some philosophers and scientists (acting as philosophers) make a distinction between "laws of nature" and "scientific laws". In those cases the latter are conceived as revisable, practical approximations -- allowed to be inaccurate. With the former's interpretation taking it that if laws of science are not wholly correct, then there are still more thorough nomological principles that are fully legit (regardless of whether or not they can be eventually apprehended / described). But even that distinction-making camp has one faction where laws of nature are disparaged somewhat by the Regularists and another where they are idealized by the Necessitarians.

JBS Haldane wanted to call them "uniformities of Nature" instead of laws.

Quote:I'm inclined to think that historically, 'Laws of nature' are worryingly close to being Christian theology translated into science-speak.


Paul Davies made some hay over that circa a decade ago and got roasted later on by his fellows for daring to uncover and place focus on those roots.

Quote:We have 'God', the universe's ancient Mesopotamian King, whose Word creates whole new realities, whose word is Law. And we have the vision of a universe created by God's Word, subject to those Laws that the Lord has spoken into being, just as the people of Akkad were subject to the law spoken into being by their Lord, the King of Akkad.


Leibniz contended that a world-logic which allowed the greatest diversity of all possible things to co-exist (over time if not all simultaneously in space) is the one whose cosmos would be realized. But his God as the selector could seemingly as much be optionally left out of that "best of all possible worlds" contest of the fittest as much as kept in the scenario.

Quote:In the early years of the scientific revolution, those who were to become known as 'scientists' imagined their task as uncovering and elucidating God's unvarying and eternal Word as expressed in Laws of nature. Isaac Newton was very open about thinking that way. Even the free-thinkers of the time, the 17th and 18th century Deists, imagined a God that created the universe and whose handiwork is visible in its order and design, even as they expressed skepticism about the revealed religion of the churches and their scriptures. For many intellectuals in those years, science was probably the most direct way to, as Einstein later put it, 'read the mind of God'. So the whole idea that nature's Laws are universal, necessary and invariant was simply assumed as a given.

Today atheists have abandoned belief in God, but they still believe devoutly in the 'Laws of nature' that the non-existent God supposedly spoke into existence. (Kinda like the Cheshire cat's grin in 'Alice', the echo of God's disappearance...) So as much as the atheists like to insist that science and religion are incompatible, one could make an argument that science as presently conceived makes most sense in the context of religion.

Religious institutions unsurprisingly exploit that historical background and the brute coherence of this universe for all it's worth: Scientists Baffled by Laws of Nature.

The multiverse theorists dismiss the luck of a universe that hangs together well by positing that there can be plenty of other domains which don't make sense -- that don't conform to ubiquitous regularities or reliable, general expectations. Thus increasing the chances of this rare kind (vaguely similar to trillions of dead planets & moons making an Earth with complex life statistically possible). We in turn find ourselves in such a consistent cosmos because that's the only type we could either exist in or endure / prosper in for a semi-comfortable duration. As opposed to the arbitrary, dream-like, unpredictable world that's dangerous for sane people depicted in Jack Vance's speculative fiction tale "The Men Return".

- - - - - - - -

Richard: "For me, the ultimate ‘weird nature’ short story has to be ‘The Men Return’ by Jack Vance – and it made such an impression on me when I first came across it during the 1980s. I’m always surprised at how few SF readers seem to have heard of it. The Earth is passing through a region of space in which the laws of nature (cause and effect in particular) are utterly, fundamentally, different: the result is ‘weird’, not in the formal ghost-and-horror sense, but in the more informal sense of just gloriously, deliciously, surreal." http://weirdfictionreview.com/2014/02/an...rd-nature/


K-H-W (short-story identification): "I'm fairly sure it was in a collection of short stories, possibly a 'Year's Finest Sci-Fi' or some such, but I haven't had any luck tracking it down.

The story takes place on an Earth that somehow has drifted into an area of non-causality, and things no longer make sense to most humans. One eats a lichen of some sort that was growing, and is fine. His companion then eats the same thing and dies horribly. The only beings that are doing well are those who were somehow adapted / synced to this form or reality, and it's alluded to that they may have been crazy before it occurred. The story ends with Earth coming OUT of the area, as it witnessed by one of the adapted creatures attempting to simply walk across a huge gap (as they apparently normally can), and instead falling into it, and the humans expressing some degree of happiness that it is their time again.

Off the top of my head, it FEELS kind of like a Jack Vance story, but I've yet to be able to track it down. Any ideas? [...] Ah, hah! I THOUGHT it felt like Vance! Many thanks!"
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions...-causality
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