Re: Opinion piece in NY Times - Taking Science on Faith

On Nov 24, 9:36 am, 9fingers <gd9fing...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?_r=1&ref=opin...


From the article by Paul Davies,

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"Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the
laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from "that's not a
scientific question" to "nobody knows." The favorite reply is, "There
is no reason they are what they are -- they just are." The idea that
the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the
very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that
the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are
as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the
bedrock of reality -- the laws of physics -- only to find that reason
then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world
about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then
nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and
absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality."
---------------------------------------------------------------

I am not a physicist, but it's my guess that Davies' colleagues see
him coming a mile away. They know that he's well aware there are
currently no mechanistic explanations for the origin of the laws of
physics, and that such an explanation may be impossible because these
very laws are what we depend upon to deduce the "reason" behind
natural events (and thus would not be available during their origin).

In other words "There is no reason they are what they are -- they just
are." is likely shorthand for: "The fact that we do not, maybe even
cannot, know the reasons doesn't mean there aren't reasons. I can't
give you a naturalistic explanation right now, and I know you're
looking for an ultimate metaphysical explanation but that's not what
science is about."

It seems to me Davies is not really looking for reasons why "the laws
of physics are what they are." What he is disturbed about is the idea
that these laws might be the result of stochastic events in the early
stages of universal development. This difficulty with possible
randomness, non-directedness or mindlessness is the source of his
anxiety over "reasonless absurdity." He wouldn't opine about
"meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order
and rationality" unless the "reasons" he is looking for are ultimately
metaphysical rather than naturalistic.

This confusion underlies a point he tries to make later in the
article,

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"The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn't so much
explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be
a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on
them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do
they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from
the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith --
namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe,
like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe
even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both
monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete
account of physical existence."
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Failing "to provide a complete account of physical existence" is quite
far removed from being based upon Faith. And belief in the existence
of reasons or explanations is not the same as belief in the existence
of "something outside the universe." The "faith" involved in science
is a rather meager and uncontroversial kind of belief. We all expect
that objects of interest, when subjected to the same influences, will
react today and tomorrow as they did yesterday.

In fact that seems less like faith than it does reason.

RLC

.

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