Does Reality Reflect Natural Laws, Or Vice Versa?
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
The New York Times Science section today summarizes a debate that’s more than 2,000 years old: Can we say that the universe reflects fundamental laws? As its hook, the article highlights the thoughts of Dr. Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State, who brought the debate to a rolling boil recently by opining that science was, to some extent, a matter of faith.
Despite all of the hoopla and the plethora of theories on the subject, it seems to me that we can satisfy ourselves about the nature of the universe as follows:
First, we can restrict our field of inquiry to the universe that we live in. Sure, it’s interesting to postulate what other universes may exist, but let’s explain the one we live in first.
Second, we can say that the universe operates according to the principles of space and time. (This is a pragmatic statement of fact; what other principles would it operate in accordance with?)
And here’s the most important part: Since principles are concepts, and since concepts don’t exist in the concrete, but only in the abstract, the principles that govern space and time must exist outside space and time. Space and time don’t create them, but must concur with them. (This leaves open the possibility that another universe may concur with other principles.)
I believe that this adequately addresses much of the uncertainty. (Quantum mechanics is simply another principle of space and time, perfectly maleable as an abstract concept, and nothing to get hung up on.)
With these founding ideas, we can make rapid and comprehensive progress in understanding our universe and our existence. (As I explain in my book.)
And when we read stories like the one from Detroit in which a seven year old girl was shot six times as she tried to shield her mother from an attack, or those from Iraq where the dire feuds between factions and attacks by insurgents continue to cause misery and mayhem, we realize that we yet have a lot to understand and address in our own universe without needing to go looking for others.
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