Here's an interesting article from the New York Times Science Section

By DENNIS OVERBYE:

Laws of Nature, Source Unknown

“Gravity,” goes the slogan on posters and bumper stickers. “It isn’t just a good idea. It’s the law.”

And what a law. Unlike, say, traffic or drug laws, you don’t have a choice about obeying gravity or any of the other laws of physics. Jump and you will come back down. Faith or good intentions have nothing to do with it.

Existence didn’t have to be that way, as Einstein reminded us when he said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Against all the odds, we can send e-mail to Sri Lanka, thread spacecraft through the rings of Saturn, take a pill to chase the inky tendrils of depression, bake a turkey or a soufflé and bury a jump shot from the corner.

Yes, it’s a lawful universe. But what kind of laws are these, anyway, that might be inscribed on a T-shirt but apparently not on any stone tablet that we have ever been able to find?

Are they 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?

Read the Complete Article here >>

That was an entertaining article, thanks.

I think Davies has a point and judging by the amount of vehement reaction he received, he hit a nerve. Like when the one guy said that people are numbers- that shows a rather extreme quasi-religious way of thinking.

That doesn't mean scientists should stop trying to figure out everything. It's a useful endeavor.

Laws of science are very reliable, but that doesn't mean that they are answers unto themselves. There could be more to gravity, for instance, than mass and distance. But it's reliable.

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Suffering is OK. Suffering to serve as entertainment to others is not OK.

The laws of nature are descriptions of what happens. They don't force anything to happen anymore than a picture of you leaving a room forces you to leave the room. You can't violate a law of nature because whatever you do is described by the laws of nature.

Some people have it backwards. The truth of laws comes from whatever happens in nature. Nature doesn't bend itself to some preset laws.

The idea of universal governing laws being dictated by some magical universe cop is an obvious throwback to religion.

Read this Laws of Nature [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] and realize that there is no evidence for any kind of forceful governing "laws".

The universe came first.

"The Laws of Nature are not rules controlling the metamorphosis of what is, into what will be. They are discriptions of patterns that exist, all at once, in the whole Tapestry... The four-dimensional space-time manifold displays all eternity at once." -'Genius; the Life and Science of Richard Feynman'

The problem with the regularity veiw is that it is not good in explaining anything.

i think it could be fancy bookkeeping.

Hi,

Nice article thanks.

What I have observed is that every law that has been ever published has ultimately been overturned by another law. So, it seems that laws evolve as the universe evolves and as the means for humans to perceive the universe evolves (I have no idea what the laws are for chimpanzees, since I cannot communicate with them).

Someone comes up with a way of describing parts of the universe at one moment, and we agree by consensus that this is going to be the law until something better comes up and is more complete (there is always incompleteness in every law that has been established). It is no different than any other law.

We have not even begun to broach laws for emotions, existence, consciousness etc. What we have done is simply exclude them from current laws. Nice trick.

Rich

Rich

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Hello Hamletswords. If you will pardon my curiosity and getting off topic a bit, but; exactly what is it, as to your signature, about suffering you feel is "OK"?

Thanks,
William

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The theory of substance fell into disuse because philosophers and scientists came to believe that its putative explanatory power was illusory: there was no empirical test possible for the existence of substance, and positing its existence merely deferred, without genuinely solving, the very problems it was invoked to explain. Similarly, there is no empirical test for [physical necessity], in spite of claims to the contrary by some Necessitarians. Nomological necessity is purely a metaphysical posit, an anachronism that has outlived its usefulness. It is not that we must regard the theory as false, only as superfluous. Speaking of God, Laplace is alleged to have said to Napoleon "I have no need of such an hypothesis." Speaking now of nomicity, I would echo Laplace's words.

To abandon necessitarianism means to elevate – and to live with – contingency: the world does not have to be the way it is; it just is. The charge on the electron does not have to be –1.6 × 10–19 coulombs; it just is. Light does not have to have a constant, finite, velocity; it just does. To invoke nomological necessities to 'account' for such constancies (order, etc.) is to engage in explanatory hand-waving. Is it really any more informative to be told that light has a constant velocity because there is a law of nature to that effect than to be told that opium is sleep-inducing because it has a 'dormative power'? The form of an explanation has been given, but the content is chimerical.

There is orderliness is Nature. That's the way Nature is. There are no secret, sublime, mystical laws forcing Nature to be that way. Or at least, there is no good rational reason to believe that there are such queer entities. Physical laws are descriptions, they neither are, nor function like, prescriptions. -Norman Swartz

So, as you can see, regularity theory offers just as much real explanatory power.

you will have to explain that to me how do laws change? false concepts must be revised but laws are constant,Surely we dont make laws we make observations.Its interesting that what I have always thought was unexplained about laws, did the the bb create them or have they always existed is now being debated.