Transcendental Singified and the Laws of Physics: continuing series on the Atheist Montra

part 2



This image of a full-energy collision between
gold ions shows the paths taken by thousands
of subatomic particles produced during the impact.

(PhysOrg.com) -- For a brief instant,
it appears, scientists at
Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island
recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Remember the argument asserts that law-like physics would be better explained if it were the product of a mind, since the universe has to come to be as result of physics, not as a means of creating physics. Therefore, since laws can't be disembodied things just floating about with nothing to describe or make happen there has to be some higher organizing principle that contains them and makes them work and a mind works best for that description. Even though the experiment at Brookhaven (see image link above) seems to imply that laws were broken the fact that laws are broken implies that they do exist.

Physorg.com
March 19, 2010 By Suzanne Taylor Muzzin

Parity was long thought to be a fundamental law of nature. It essentially states that the universe is neither right- nor left-handed — that the laws of physics remain unchanged when expressed in inverted coordinates. In the early 1950s it was found that the so-called weak force, which is responsible for nuclear radioactivity, breaks the parity law. However, the strong force, which holds together subatomic particles, was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least under normal circumstances.

Now this law appears to have been broken by a team of about a dozen particle physicists, including Jack Sandweiss, Yale's Donner Professor of Physics. Since 2000, Sandweiss has been smashing the nuclei of gold atoms together as part of the STAR experiment at RHIC, a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator, to study the law of parity under the resulting extreme conditions.

Most atheists responded to that argument with typical mocking and ridicule. One guy ridiculously tried to prove that I never studied in a Ph.D. program and just wound up proving that he didn't know the difference between candidacy and an actual degree. There was one who claimed to be a scientist, and Included to believe him. He demands more foscus and accruacy in my languge but had nothing to actually contrdict the argument.

Mat Hunt, the laws of physics.
carm, 2/15/11

The "Laws of physics"(no 1 in thread)

I see this term thrown about with no regard to what it means and I thought I would do an OP to clarify what it really means. In order to to this I must first explain how things are done in physics. The first point to address is how do physicists find anything out in the first place and the answer to that is experimentation, this can be measuring something, seeing how something interacts with something else, a whole myriad of possible techniques.

Once the data has been gathered than the next task it to see what information can be obtained from the data, as well as if it possible possible to codify the data in the form of an equation, such equations are usually known as laws. The more experiments performed more laws are obtained and then the physicist can start incorporating the laws to make more general laws that explain more of the experimental onservation. These new more general laws will in general have the ability to predict the outcome of experiments that have yet to be performed and can be used to test the robustness of the laws themselves.

These general laws can sometimes be made into more general laws which can describe a whole range of phenomena, these more general laws are known as a theory in physics.

What most people refer to as the "laws of physics" are these sets of equations that have been discovered by physicists which describe (in the majority of cases to a very high degree of accuracy) what appears in nature.

It is not that nature appears to be inherently mathematical in nature but that it can be approximated by mathematical laws to an incredibly high degree.

HRG: responds to Hunt

Beg to differ on this point - slightly. IMHO the process is not so straightforward as you described it. Equations are not always just a mathematical summary of the data; often they are conjectured or extrapolated, and confirmed afterwards on the basis of their predictions.

I'm thinking particularly of three examples, which were jumps into the unknown, as it were.:

Maxwell's introduction of the "displacement current" (the time derivative of the electric field), confirmed afterwards by Hertz' discovery of radio waves
Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric, confirmed afterwards by the precession of the Mercury perihel
Dirac's equation, introduced on formal reasons (a relativistic wave equation with a first-order time derivative), confirmed afterwards by the positron.

Unfortunately for him this actually doesn't disprove my argument at all. He wants people to think it does because it says what I'm calling "laws of physics are not really laws." At the same time that has not the impact it seems to because it doesn't deny the fact that there are question about the law like regularity of the Universe behavior and they are not answering those questions. So what if the equations point to other things, those other things seem to require mind and they have no answer for this. In fact what that really does is confirm what I've sound about the nature of science it tears down the assertion of a fortress of facts and shows that it's actually more a matter of accepting a philosophy. There is no atheist fortress of fact with a moutin proved truths explaining everything in the universe. This scientist is actually admitting that. Of course the atheists on that board refused to see that. Then went on making like he really gave me what for.

Originally Posted by Mat Hunt

As a working scientist I know this stuff very well. As other people have said you are confusing the "laws of physics" with nature itself, that is why your "fire in the equations" thread is very laughable, you confuse term and write in very vague terms without bothering to define them (I am thinking "organisational principle" here).

This is a beef about protocol. If he controls the terminology then his view is in charge and the gaps are assumed filled by his ideology. He's merely complaining because my termenology is not his, but he doesn't actually explain the questions or say my view is wrong. I tired again to bridge the gap by discussing that we are both academics and as people of learning we should be able to communicate ideas not just put down each other disciplines. I kind of included him in the mix of intelligent people and he sort of canned the "this is laughable" and discussed it a bit more. Although I didn't convince him. I think see some flaws in his view. I'm sure he sees many in mine.

Originally Posted by Mat Hunt

Not too sure what you're saying here. I was saying that your starting point IMHO was wrong. Causality is a consequence of other things.
When we become sloppy with our language, confusion occurs. You wouldn't want to convnce someone of god because of sloppy language would you?

Meta:

"sloppy" is relative. You define "efficient" in way that fits your social milieu in the academy--sort of akin climate of opinion. I do the same but in a different end of the academy. Also we are on a message board. When I speak like an academic on this board people complain about it.

The argument C/e is a consequence is is not necessarily an answer to my argument because I say "where are the laws before the universe exists." So become, that is coming to be would seem to require c/e yet what is this c/e a consequence of if there's nothing to produce a consequence? Presumably c/e must exist before the bb expansion right? Otherwise would make it expand?

I realize there's a problem with using the term "before." I have read that scientist get around this problem be speaking of "beyond event horizon." am I using that correctly?

Mat Hunt

I think you're talking about how the universe evolved from the big bang right? the way the physics unfolded? Wouldn't this just be a property of the universe like anything else? again an abuse of terms here could lead to problems

Meta:

Sure it would be once there's a universe. Where does the universe come from? What makes it be a universe if not physical or natural laws?

I see that part of the issue has to do with the way ideas presented. The scientist wants a presentation that is under his control. It's really a problem of language. For example taking issue with the term "organizing princely." Not a term used in scinece so he assumes it's not good. Yet it describes perfectly exactly what the atheists, skeptics, and "forces of science" (which of cousre can't include believers in God) mean when they say "laws of physics are only descriptions. of the way the universe behaves." For example the evolution of sub atomic particles into stars and planets. The whole thing is the result of gravity. Gravity forms abstraction to the center of mass, larger and large units form so that particles become atomic particles and then molecules, molecules begin to exert a gravitational force and attract enough to form elements. Then we get gas and gas begin to exert a real force from its center of mass and forms into actual matter. Then it's just a matter of more attraction until planet formation happens. Once all that is accomplished then we start seeing a similar evolutionary build up form amino acids to life to organisms and on an on until we have cosmologists.

Obviously this could be described as an "organizing principle" as gravity clearly is a principle and has an organizing effect. This can masqaurade as a description only but there's clearly a covert reference to some regularity beneath the surface. One analogy used an atheist in that discussion, not scientific but not criticized by the scientist as such, even though my terminology was, a reference to "square peg in round hole." There's an organizing tendency in the shape of the hole. That would be a metaphor for the way this gravity thing works. The shape determines what fits in and what comes out. We can say that's descriptive of behavior but it's also an organizing principle, moreover, someone has to put a round shaped hole there and someone has to put a peg into it. In the final analysis they atheists and skeptics wind up making a bunch of meaningless statements every bit as unscientific and veg as the science guy says mine are; things like "it happens this way because it just does." One atheist summarized their position with the scientific terminology "a big pile of stuff that just happens."

Some atheists took umbrage over the metaphor of a law giver. In those discussions they insisted upon the image of law giver being litteral. I must have ment that in the most rigid sense, even though I died it the whole way through and continued to say "I don't literally mean a law giver in the sense of Moses with the tablets." I think the way I express argument best is done above here, "higher organizing principle" as the product of mind would be better than the notion of a big law giver. Of cousre God can be a principle, mind can be a principle. Anything within the range of Spinoza's ground of understanding, Tillich's ground of being, Hegel's dialectic, Berkeley's observer, or the transcendental signifier would work.

The atheists think they are really saying something when they assert a "pile of stuff just happens" all they are saying is "let's not think about it." No one in scinece ever says that. Atheists argue "can't you believers just assert the idea that things could just happen for no reason" but we never hear scientists say "we don't really theorize about the origin of the universe, things just happen, why worry it's just a pile of stuff." Far from being an answer to the argument it's nothing but a challenge to keep it going. I had originally possed it as a dilemma. They never eve responded to the other side. The other side being without prescriptive physical law, if the regularity of the universe that is so dependable is just discretion of "the pile of stuff that just happens" then there's real reason to rule out miracles, they are not violating anything. most people will admit that our descriptions can't be perfect so miracles just become the more compete description and there's really nothing bar them. They never really answer that. They just say "they don't happen." But of course that's just because they rule them out on the basis that they don't happen, but tha'ts a hold over form the Laplace who believed prescriptive laws of physics. Without real laws and no causality the atheist view point is a self defeating proposition.