Van Fraasen: There are No Laws of Nature

[Iwannaplato]

You neglected all the essential rituals

You have to say [with reservations]

I said it in my heart.

And above all else, you must now present an entirely pointless additional post that just says "Notes: KIV"

I'm no longer a member of the Kinder Idioten Vorstände,

[Janoah]

There are No Laws of Nature
"Laws and Symmetry"

Symmetry in physics is invariance. Symmetry does not deny regularity, but shows its invariance.
Another thing is that the formulations of the existing regularity are always approximate and limited.

[Skepdick]

Symmetry in physics is invariance. Symmetry does not deny regularity, but shows its invariance.
Another thing is that the formulations of the existing regularity are always approximate and limited.

Some regularities survive some transformations. No regularity survives all transformations.

In fact, I can't think of any law which is scale invariant.

[Janoah]

In fact, I can't think of any law which is scale invariant.

They talk about the speed of light, the law of conservation of energy (E=mc2)

[Skepdick]

They talk about the speed of light, the law of conservation of energy (E=mc2)

So massless particles have zero energy...

In practice not all energy is mass, so the mass-energy "equivalence" isn't an equivalence.

[Janoah]

So massless particles have zero energy...

no, in the general case, E2=p2c2 + m2c4

[popeye1945]

Laws infer a law giver, or is this splitting hair, certainly there are forces of nature, the wind in my sails tends to carry me to this conclusion.

[PeteJ]

If I had to describe my approach to philosophy of science, it would be some mash up like methodologically anarchic, empirical, pragmatic instrumentalism and chuck in some rationalism, if you fancy which, if you look at science, is pretty much how it is performed and pretty much every philosophy of science is some blend of those. For van Fraasen, you have to turn up the empiricism and go easy on the methodological anarchy.

The changing words and focus just add to the confusion. You could hardly slip a Rizla between empirical adequacy and instrumentalism, for instance. The difference is in the interest of philosophers and scientists, a crude distinction with a lot of overlap, but if your primary interest is in whether a theory is true, then you are more philosopher than scientist. If you are interested in whether a theory produces results, you're more scientist than philosopher. Then you get into the thing about does a theory work because it's true, which in essence is what realists want to claim. And that is where some scientists lose interest and tell philosophers that arguing about whether a theory is true, philosophy, is useless; which purely in terms of results,

I feel you've hit the nail on the head and helped me understand something important about the relationship between science and philosophy, or at least between the the attitudes of their practitioners. It seems unlikely anybody could understand these issues who has to rely on such a muddle of vague words. I don't know how anyone has the patience.

I can see that this is an issue for philosophy of science since it usually adopts the same metaphysical assumptions as most scientists. This usually means assuming that the space-time world is real not merely in the way it seems to be but metaphysically and fundamentally real. For scientists this assumption creates no practical problems but philosophers of science are now faced with the problem of having to explain why, if it is truly real, it is impossible to prove it. No empirical test would be enough and Kant demonstrates that metaphysics proves exactly the opposite.

What are philosophers of science to do in this situation? If a fundamental analysis reveals the extended cosmos to be unreal then this will never be discovered in the physical sciences. It will always be possible that the objects that seem to obey laws of nature are conceptual imputations, as is claimed by the Buddha. (It is surely remarkable that he could make such a vast claim and still be getting away with it). In this case they must be psychological laws or 'laws of mind'. If so, then the laws of nature are real, even if they are entirely described by the idea of symmetry. .

But is mind real? The physicist Paul Davies' book The Mind of God might suggest he believes so, but he acknowledges that the mystics could be right to say it is not. Yet if the cosmos is a mind-created phenomenon and mind is not fundamental then where do the laws come from? If they are prior to the objects they govern then they must be more real than those objects and more real even than mind.

Would it make any sense to say that the ineluctable consequence of the perfect symmetry and unity of the world-as-a-whole is the laws of nature? On this view the laws of nature would derive from the laws of logic, and these can be real, in the sense of inevitable, without having to be physical or mental.

I think this is roughly what Lao Lzu suggests when he says the laws of earth derive from the laws of heaven and the laws of heaven derive from 'Tao being what it is'.

I wonder if the original question would be easier if the word 'real' was clearly defined.

[Will Bouwman]

I feel you've hit the nail on the head and helped me understand something important about the relationship between science and philosophy, or at least between the the attitudes of their practitioners.

Thank you, but it's hardly a great insight; science and philosophy are done by humans and are therefore as flawed and quirky as humans themselves.

I can see that this is an issue for philosophy of science since it usually adopts the same metaphysical assumptions as most scientists. This usually means assuming that the space-time world is real not merely in the way it seems to be but metaphysically and fundamentally real. For scientists this assumption creates no practical problems but philosophers of science are now faced with the problem of having to explain why, if it is truly real, it is impossible to prove it.

There's a difference between treating the world as if it is metaphysically real and believing it to be so. Any philosopher of science worth their salt will accept that metaphysical and fundamental reality is just one possible explanation for the phenomena.

I wonder if the original question would be easier if the word 'real' was clearly defined.

Well, the problem with analytic philosophy is that you can define words any way you like. That makes questions a lot easier, but while the answer will be discoverable in a given context, it won't necessarily be true beyond that context.

[Skepdick]

I wonder if the original question would be easier if the word 'real' was clearly defined.

You can't clearly define "clearly"; nor can you define "define"...

Language doesn't work like that.