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- Yuri Balashov, Laws of Physics and the Universe.Are the laws of nature real? Do they belong to the world or merely reflect the way we speak about it? And if they are real, what sort of entity are they? These questions have been intensely debated by philosophers. Modern cosmology, however, has given such questions a new twist by introducing a unique perspective on physical reality, the perspective which I shall call the cosmological point of view. In this perspective, the universe as a whole presents itself as a single individual entity that undergoes a radical change with time. Laws of physics, on the other hand, have both local and global significance. They characterize how things behave locally. But they also characterize the entire universe. This suggests an interesting connection between the universe as a whole and what laws of physics hold in this universe. From the cosmological point of view, these two totalities, the laws of physics and the universe, may be related. But how exactly? Are the laws “inscribed” in the fabric of the universe or do they in some sense “precede” it in the order of being? If the latter, what is a “medium,” over and above the physical universe, in which physical laws are “written”? If the former, are they but a consequence of the universe’s very existence? And if so, how could the laws of physics survive the dramatic change the physical state of the universe underwent in the course of time?
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In "A Cosmological Argument for a Self-Caused Universe ," one of us (Smith) argued that the universe explains its own existence because (i) its existence is entailed by (and so explained by) the existence of the infinitely many instantaneous universe states that compose it, and (ii) each of those states is caused by (and so explained by) infinitely many earlier universe states.[1] Moreover, (ii) is true even if the universe is finitely old because, given standard Big Bang cosmology (Friedmann cosmology), the universe does not exist at t0 (i.e., the Big Bang singularity is not real) and no matter how close some moment tn (at which the universe does exist) is to t0, there are infinitely many (indeed continuum-many) moments at which the universe exists that are even closer. Thus, even a finitely old universe has no beginning in the sense of a first moment, and hence its state at any moment is (sufficiently) caused by (all of) the universe states that precede it. Further, since this explanation of the existence of the universe is complete despite making no reference to God, and since God by definition is a part of any complete explanation of the universe, it follows that God does not exist.
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| | Scholar | More options ... How can we understand our human world, embedded as it is within the physical universe, in such a way that justice is done to both the richness, meaning and value of human life on the one hand, and what modern science tells us about the physical universe on the other hand? I argue that, in order to solve this problem, we need to see physics as being concerned only with a highly selected aspect of reality – that aspect which determines how events unfold – the causally efficacious aspect. Physics cannot describe the experiential, and if it is extended so that it does so, physical theory would cease to be explanatory. The human world can, however, be understood in terms of a different kind of explanation, which I call “personalistic”. This is not reducible to physical explanation. The world is, in short, riddled with what may be called “double comprehensibility”.
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| | Other links: pdcnet.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Philosophical considerations have been essentially involved in the origin and development of the steady-state cosmological theory (SST). These considerations include an explicit uniformitarian methodology and implicit metaphysical views concerning the status of natural laws in a changing universe. I shall examine the foundations of SST by reconstructing its early history. Whereas the strong uniformitarian methodology of SST found no support in the subsequent development of cosmology, the idea of a possible influence the global structure of the universe may have on the laws of physics operative in it has been assimilated by the standard big bang theory as it made its remarkable progress in recent decades.
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| | Other links: linkinghub.elsevier.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... I analyze different accounts of laws of nature: the Hume-Lewis regularity account, the Armstrong-Tooley relations between universals account, and my preferred account in terms of the powers and liabilities of individual substances. On any account it is most unlikely a priori that a universe would be governed by simple laws of nature. But if there is a God, it is quite probable that he will choose to create free agents of limited power, and to put them in a universe governed by simple laws of nature, in order that their purposes may have their intended effects. Hence, the operation of simple laws of nature confirms the existence of God.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... "I have come to think that the laws of physics are real because my experience with the laws of physics does not seem to me to be very different in any fundamental way from my experience with rocks. For those who have not lived with the laws of physics, I can offer the obvious argument that the laws of physics as we know them work, and there is no other known way of looking at nature that works in anything like the same sense.".
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| | Scholar | More options ... What are the laws of physics? -- The stuff that kicks back -- Point-of-view invariance -- Gauging the laws of physics -- Forces and broken symmetries -- Playing dice -- After the bang -- Out of the void -- The comprehensible cosmos -- Models of reality.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Why are the laws of physics the way they are? A causal answer argues to the laws from something physically more fundamental. For example,string theory is pursuing that kind of argument. I argue for a purposive answer to our question. Why are the laws of physics the way they are? In order for the universe to be knowable through empirical inquiry by embodied rational inquirers. The argument has three parts: the physics, the move from physics to metaphysics, the metaphysics. The starting point in physics is the derivation of extremum principles for physics from Fisher informaiton. The argument is not based on 'fine-tuning’, anthropic principles, intelligent design, or a ‘god of the gaps’ argument. This purposive answer specifies a purpose to which the universe is ordered and so explains why the laws of physics are the way they are. This is a metaphysics of inquiry and logically cannot be in conflict with empirical inquiry. It is therefore not a 'science stopper'. The argument blocks the inference from ‘blind’ to 'purposeless’. As an ‘argument to design’, criticisms by Kant, Hume and Dawkins of the ‘argument from design’ do not apply.
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| | Scholar | More options ... The Newtonian universe is usually understood to contain two classes of causal factors: universal regularitiesand initial conditions. I demonstrate that,in fact, the Newtonian universe contains no causal factors other thanuniversal regularities: the initial conditions ofany physical system are merely theconsequence of universal regularities acting on previoussystems. It follows that aNewtonian universe lacks the degree of contingency that is usually attributed to it. This is a necessary precondition for maintaining that the Newtonian universe is a block universe that exhibits no temporal development. It follows also that Newtonian physics is inconsistent, since a Newtonian universe as a whole exhibits some properties – such as the total mass of the universe – that are not determined by the laws of Newtonian physics, and that must therefore be considered contingent.
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| | Other links: hdl.handle.net springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The standard view of philosophers is that the existence of particular events within our universe is capable of being explained in terms of initial conditions and natural laws, but that the existence of our universe itself is a 'brute given' that is incapable of naturalistic explanation. A supernatural explanation of the existence of our universe may be alleged to be possible ('God created our universe so that humans may exist and the existence of humans is an intrinsic good'), but an explanation that appeals only to factors, situations or regularities in nature is deemed to be in principle impossible. It is also a standard view of philosophers that the less fundamental natural laws of our universe are capable of being explained in terms of more fundamental laws of our universe, but that the most basic natural laws of our universe are incapable of being explained naturalistically. Perhaps they can be explained supernaturally, by asserting that God ordained them so that humans may eventually evolve, but no other explanation is supposed possible.
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| | Other links: informaworld.com tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The finite age of the universe and the existence of cosmological horizons provides a strong argument that the observable universe represents a finite causal region with finite material and informational resources. A similar conclusion follows from the holographic principle. In this paper I address the question of whether the cosmological information bound has implications for fundamental physics. Orthodox physics is based on Platonism: the laws are treated as infinitely precise, perfect, immutable mathematical relationships that transcend the physical universe and remain totally unchanged by physical processes, however extreme. If instead the laws of physics are regarded as akin to computer software, with the physical universe as the corresponding hardware, then the finite computational capacity of the universe imposes a fundamental limit on the precision of the laws and the specifiability of physical states. That limit depends on the age of the universe. I examine how the imprecision of the laws impacts on the evolution of highly entangled states and on the problem of dark energy.
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