Hello pgrmdave,
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Originally Posted by pgrmdave
I disagree with your idea, James. While scientists do not know the underlying cause for the laws of physics, the laws of physics still apply. Use a computer program as a metaphor.
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The operation of the universe is controlled. That is why we observe consistency. We can catalogue the empirical evidence that demonstrate this consistency. We can model consistency in motion of matter by mathematical equations. This is proper and of great use. It is when we begin to imagine that we know why consistency and predictability occurs that we become emboldened to make claims about the nature of cause. For example, the cause of electromagnetism is declared to be electric charge. No one knows what is electric charge. So long as it is imagined to be mechanical in nature, we can be certain it is only theoretical and will not suffice as a fundamental property of this universe. What needs to be postulated are properties of the universe that cause matter to form life and generate individual intelligent thought.
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Assume I create a program that sorts five user entered words alphabetically. This program will become our metaphorical universe. Now, a scientist studies this program (our universe) and discovers that 'calm' always comes before 'storm', and that 'darkest' always comes before 'dawn', and so on, and he is able to discover that the laws of this universe determine in which order the words should be formed, 'a' before 'b', and so on. Eventually, he is able to predict what words will be in what order. He does not know why the words form alphabetically, but they do, and that is what he is interested in.
This is what science is like, we are discovering the rules, and we are not interested so much in the reason for the rules.
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That is fine as long as scientist do not claim the reason to be mechanical causes. Thank you for your response. It is nice to meet you.
James
