From where did the physical laws come?

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Charlemagne II

Yes, it is a tough question.

I also suspect that the physical laws that we measure quantitatively or other than quantity.

I used the term “quality” for “other than quantity.”

Also, concerning the evidence, the evidence is infinitely greater for a super-intelligent being or beings making the laws of nature, than mere CHANCE. CHANCE is a “non-being” or better, nonexistent.

Chance, like all of math, is something our mind created and it does not exist. It only exist in our mind. It does not have extramental being.
 
Jim

****Chance, like all of math, is something our mind created and it does not exist. It only exist in our mind. It does not have extramental being. ****

Mathematics includes principles that relate to chance. The great mathematician Blaise Pascal along with a colleague developed a game theory to accommodate a friend who was a heavy gambler. In that sense mathematics and chance are tied to what you have called the extramental world.

On a simpler level, if you flip a quarter to get heads or tails, there is a 50/50% chance the coin will land heads or tails. In that sense the mathematical law of chance is tied to a physical event, even though the event is measured by the mind rather than extramentally.
 
Will B;9690854 said:
Gravity has always been in existence… It just took man ( Issac Newton) to discover it.

Issac Newton didn’t discover gravity, he formulated the laws of gravity. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is an extension of those laws.
 
Charlemagne II

I most certainly agree that there is a correlation between math and the physical world.

However, math does not regulate the laws of nature.

Math is a language, tool and art that we use to describe the laws of nature.

As stated earlier, I believe or suspect that supra-rational being(s) infused the physical world with rationality. That is from where the rationality of nature comes.

I suspect that micro and macro are infused on two different levels and are inter-phased, analogous to hardware and software on our computers. Or perhaps there are better analogies.

As always, I am not here to argue, but to listen and learn. If I sound too assertive or aggressive, I apologize–THANKS! I am thinking out loud–I am not a loud mouth. THANKS!
 
Depends upon the laws. And, “laws” is a poorly chosen word, because laws are simply arbitrarily chosen rules which are regularly violated. Principles of action would be more accurate, because they are never violated.

To reduce confusion, I’ll use “laws” to stand for “principles of action.”

There are only three natural laws that we know of, the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. They are the inherent properties of dark energy, and are all time-independent.

The other laws of physics are geometrical choices, engineered by the Creators as components of a structured but flexible universe. These are all time-dependent, suggesting that “time” is part of an engineered interactive geometry.

These are all non-standard interpretations that have zero agreement in the physics community.
Long time no see, old friend. Hope everything is well with you.
 
Jim,

As stated earlier, I believe or suspect that supra-rational being(s) infused the physical world with rationality. That is from where the rationality of nature comes.

At the risk of seeming repetitive, but I hope not argumentative, rationality is indeed a human tool by which we understand the world “out there.” However, the world “out there” does not behave according to our invention, but according to our discovery. We cannot invent gravity, but we can discover it. That the world is subject to our rational discovery says to me that God made it so that we could delight and benefit from discovering that what is “out there” can be understood by the tools he gave us to understand the “out there.” That is why the world is ordered in such a way … to reveal that the one who created the world was a Lawgiver of supreme genius. He gave us not only the physical laws that govern the evolution of the universe, but also the laws of right-reasoning (logic) so that we could, by making the effort, gradually discover the genius of the Lord, and in so doing, draw nearer and nearer to Him.
 
I am hoping for some help.

From where did the physical laws of the universe come?

Our human reason can see that the laws are filled with reason.

From where did the laws’ reason come and our ability to see their reason?

Thanks!
Your observation is, for me, the single most potent argument for the existence of a Creator. There are two important elements in it. The first is the order that can be described by rigorous mathematical tools. It is true that the description might be incomplete, or sparse, or even erroneous; but surely we sense that underlying natural phenomena are beautiful and ingenious laws. The second element is human reason itself. Isn’t it astonishing that reason has the power to pierce the apparent inscrutability of chemical phenomena, biological processes and the composition of matter?

What would you expect if there were no Creator? I would expect no laws, chaos, no beauty, no pattern. I would also expect no beginning. Above all, I would not expect that I could be here speculating on this; I would not expect the emergence of a conscious reason. Our universe doesn’t look like this.

Some say that the multiverse is actually like that because universes keep popping from a primordial source; we were just lucky because our universe allowed for the existence of reason and conscience. The fact that intelligent people seem to actually espouse this view without realizing that such a world also requires order and pattern baffles me. Is not a past-eternal multiverse popping universes with laws also an utterly organized and disciplined universe with tremendous creativity? Not to mention that such view is essentially a metaphysical speculation without any motivation from empirical observations, unlike the previous discoveries that demoted humans to a less privileged locus in the scheme of things.

Given our best knowledge of the way the universe works and came into being, the Judeo-Christian God seems the best explanation for our origins, although that cannot be directly proved by us, frail humans. Some of this God’s attributes are necessary conditions for addressing the observations I mention above. Take the beginning of time. If the universe is past-finite, a creator must lie outside the space-time boundaries of the universe; hence we say of our God that He is timeless and immaterial. The same goes for thinking of God as inherently material. This would solve the question of the apparent rationality of the material world, but would not solve the question of the beginning of the world. This infinitely old God would be just another item in the long list physical entities, and therefore subject to those seemingly rational laws that govern the universe. This of course would imply that rationality existed for itself: past-eternal but not grounded in anything material and distinct from God. Then God would be a trivial being and the real God would be this immaterial mind. The only difference relative to our God would be that it was subject to time.

If cosmology proved that the universe was past-eternal, I guess we could still feel comfortable with our God, because His most important characteristic is that He is immaterial, and not that He is timeless. He would still be eternal, though. Past-eternal, in this case.
 
Charlemagne II

I agree!

I have always agreed.

To use an example to show that I agree, Pluto was there before our telescopes helped us locate it.

I am in total agreement that we did not invent gravity; we merely notice it and describe it.

And as a practicing Christian, I believe the rest of your post.

Thanks!
 
I’ll reinterpret your question as “Why is the world orderly and intelligible?” There are of course a variety of possible answers.

You asked in a Catholic forum, so the first answer should be the Catholic answer. Or rather, the Catholic answers. There is a small range of options that Catholics can choose from. At one end is the opinion that God freely created logical and physical laws out of nothing to govern the universe which he also freely created out of nothing. At the other end is the opinion that logical and physical laws are uncreated aspects of God’s nature, and because of his goodness the universe he freely created out of nothing resembles himself in those ways. Like I said, it’s a narrow range, but there are intermediate positions a Catholic can also choose.

The advantage of the Catholic answers are that all effects have a single ultimate cause (God), and this simplicity is a desirable feature for a theory to have (c.f. Occam’s Razor). The disadvantages of the Catholic answers are legion. Most obviously, it merely pushes the explanation of orderliness and intelligibility back one level: How could even God create logic, since without logic God cannot be said to exist? Or, Why are orderliness and intelligibility characteristics of God? Another disadvantage is that, since Catholic doctrine is that God created freely without even necessity from within his own nature, there can be no finite set of lawful principles that fully explain God’s choice to create – and that in turn means the theory of divine creation is an infinitely complex theory despite the single ultimate cause, and so Occam’s Razor would utterly reject it. Another disadvantage is that the theory has no predictive power: whether the Catholic teaching is that orderliness and intelligibility are from God or not makes no difference to our actions in the world or our reverence to God.

Other monotheistic answers are largely the same as the Catholic answers. Some Protestants reject parts of the Catholic faith that imply disadvantages I mentioned above. The pagan or polytheistic answer has traditionally been that the world is not orderly or intelligible. But they’re clearly wrong.

The “traditional” pantheistic and atheistic answers come in three varieties. One was the same as the pagan/polytheistic. The second added that we perceive orderliness and intelligibility but they are merely illusions or delusions in our minds. The most popular was to say that there is no reason why. Things just are orderly and intelligible. It’s a brute fact with no explanation, just like the universe as a whole. The advantage? There isn’t any really, except that you could stay an old atheist curmudgeon or a superstitious woo-woo pantheist this way. The disadvantages? Gah, where to start?! The main one is that these are total abandonments of reason.

There are several important nontraditional answers. The best are probably John Leslie’s “axiarchy”, Alexander Vilenkin’s quantum tunneling, various options for Derek Parfit’s Selector, and Platonic necessity.

Axiarchy: things exist because they ought to. John Leslie famously argued for that claim, and for the claim that the best possible world (the one that most ought to exist) would be an infinity of Divine Minds each knowing everything worth knowing. It’s a kind of pantheism. Knowable things are orderly and intelligible, so if axiarchy is true then reality has to be orderly and intelligible. This theory is extremely clean and beautiful – all I can say is that I don’t buy it because I don’t think goodness of a possibility can cause its existence.

Vilenkin’s model of cosmic origins showed that the universe could get going given a spherical vacuum of zero radius and some null properties. That’s not precisely nothing in the philosophical sense, but it’s awfully close. Materialist atheists would be making only a tiny leap of faith to say that once we know the rest of physics then we may be able to show that an orderly and intelligible universe like ours can indeed arise from nothing at all.

Derek Parfit had a different way of looking at the question. Consider the set of all possible ways reality could have been. Clearly exactly one of those is the way things really are. If the reality we can see has any special characteristics, that suggests that some principle selected for those characteristics. It is rather astonishing when you think about it that the universe is orderly and intelligible at all levels, through and through. Various people suggest various ideas for what Selector is the best ultimate explanation.

Plato had it right, of course, that the only satisfying ultimate explanation for things is a logically necessary explanation. So mashing together Vilenkin, Parfit, and Plato, we get my personal favorite, that the set of real universes are those describable by continuous lawful evolution from null initial conditions (which are thereby always orderly and intelligible). Though I am not a mathematician, I share the sense of many mathematicians that mathematical truths have a kind of necessary Platonic existence, because if abstracta only existed in their physical instantiations, it would feel extremely odd, for example, that we can prove various properties of how a physical computer will perform a nonexistent algorithm regardless of the physical principles by which the computer operates. If mathematical truths have necessary Platonic existence, then it appears some abstract reality exists corresponding to the statement “Given laws X and null properties Y, a universe will pop out without need for a pre-existing substance” for some X and Y. And then since X and Y are indeed given within that abstracta and are sufficient for a universe, there’s a universe, too. If you like, you can consider the “Platonic Realm” to be the Divine Mind speaking laws to the formless void.

So there are the main options. Take your pick or invent your own.
 
There have been a number of attempts to answer conclusively this non-trivial question. From an atheist perspective perhaps the best known is V. Stengler’s book Where Do The Laws Of Physics Come From? (Prometheus Books, 2006).

My favourite is Paul Davies’ study which can be found here: scribd.com/doc/6436157/Where-Do-the-Laws-of-Physics-Come-From. From a physicist’s point of view, he analyses what could possibly be meant by the question. Though he does not recommend theistic interpretations, he does not ignore or disparage them. The conclusion from his Conclusion:
(I)n the end it may be necessary to concede that the questions have no answers because they are ultimately meaningless. The entire discussion – indeed, the entire scientific enterprise – is predicated on concepts and modes of thought that are the product of biological evolution. The Darwinian processes that built our minds compel us to address issues of cause and effect, space and time, mind and matter, logic and rationality, physics and metaphysics in certain well-defined ways. Both religion and science proceed from these universal human categories and we seem bound to seek explanations within their confines. It may well be that “explanation” couched in these ancient modes of thought will inevitably fail to encompass the deepest problems of physical existence and leave us facing irreducible mystery.
Here, of course, one can - or has to - assume that “product of biological evolution” and “Darwinian processes” are expressions that do not exclude a theist interpretation of them. Perhaps his “facing irreducible mystery” can also be seen as an ultimate impetus for faith.
 
I am the OP.

I know that this statement might be unusual.

Our ability to reason sees order or logic in the physical laws of the universe.

Our ability to reason created math, and math is used to understand the laws of the universe.

What if the laws of the universe are qualities and not quantities?

What if the principles behind the laws are of an existence that math cannot measure?

Thanks!
Your statement is not at all “unusual.” It is largely incorrect. Getting confused about the nature of fundamental concepts is not exactly a new or unusual trick.

We did not create mathematics, but only discovered it. This is evident by the fact that a mathematical statement is either true or false, not admitting intermediate variants.

We created (for example) automobiles. Their design is arbitrary and admits of an infinite variety of choices and variations. That is true for any creation.

Mathematics admits of no such choices. Either 2+2=4 or it does not. Mathematical theorems are either proven, or not.

The laws of physics are neither quantities, or are they qualities. The “laws” are principles of action, and as I’ve stated before are divided into two distinct categories.

Math does not measure anything. Math is a language, and languages do not measure things either. Math can only describe things that might be measurable, and can help us to analyze the results of the measurement.
 
Plato had it right, of course, that the only satisfying ultimate explanation for things is a logically necessary explanation. So mashing together Vilenkin, Parfit, and Plato, we get my personal favorite, that the set of real universes are those describable by continuous lawful evolution from null initial conditions (which are thereby always orderly and intelligible). Though I am not a mathematician, I share the sense of many mathematicians that mathematical truths have a kind of necessary Platonic existence.
It sounds like you’ve read Jim Holt’s book and you’ve given a good summary.

I tend to the Platonic ideal in some ways in that I can’t imagine a chaotic universe where two plus two wasn’t still true. If you have two of ‘something’ in a chaotic universe and another two of ‘something’ makes an appearance, then what else could the total of the ‘somethings’ be other than 4?

Then again, ‘I can’t imagine’ and ‘surely’ indicate that I am the type of person that Paul Davies decribes in that I am simply not wired to understand these concepts.
 
I do not read new age books. The point of my post was that you are greatly simplifying matters by suggesting that there are only four natural laws and the rest are somehow unnatural.
Neither do I. Nor do I write them. What you really mean, I guess, is that you do not read anything that might challenge the programs already instilled in your brain. That’s okay, and is the common characteristic of ignorant people throughout the world. And, ignorance is okay too. Enjoy it.

Thank you for noticing the simplification. My point was exactly that-- to simplify matters by proposing only three natural laws. In my book I go even further, proposing only two forces.
Thermodynamics has 4 laws:
(0) If two systems are each in equilibrium with a third, then the two are in equilibrium with each other.
(1) Heat and work are systems of energy transfer.
(2) Entropy always increases when a system is not in equilibrium.
(3) Entropy becomes constant as T goes to zero.
I am pretty sure that entropy is not time-reversible, which means it is time-dependent. Thus, 2 of the 4 laws you cite as being time-independent are actually time-dependent. Energy transfer in two isolated systems is also a one-way process, meaning it is time-dependent.
However, v[sub]max,vacuum[/sub]=c is time independent. So is the solenoidal condition of the magnetic field. So is the conservation laws of charge and lepton number. Non-destruction of energy is also time-independent. Perhaps you could argue that the solenoidal condition is spatially dependent (though I would disagree), but the rest are definitely not spatially dependent either.
The 0th Law of Thermodynamics is irrelevant. It is a consequence of the 2nd Law and does not facilitate understanding, so I ignore it. It did not exist when I learned classical physics in the sixties, and I assume it to be the consequence of too many irrelevant mathematicians fiddling with physics, an unfortunate trend.

Your attempts to claim that you’ve introduced time into the laws of thermodynamics are puerile. Show the math.
New age mumbo-jumbo. And thermodynamics are not time-independent. So, a bust here.
With every uninteresting and unfounded assertion, you become less interesting to me.
More new age mumbo-jumbo. Dark energy is a form of energy that causes the expansion of the universe and its nature is completely unknown; as such, it likely cannot construct actual matter from it. However, I will accept that an infinitely capable Being (i.e., God) should be able to convert dark energy, whatever it actually is, into matter.
My book describes the nature of dark energy and its relationship to the process of creation. You’ll never know about that, however. Rejoice in your self-perpetuated ignorance.
Speculative and hypothetical, but not based on anything empirical. Sounds awfully pantheistic to me.
All of my ideas are speculative and hypothetical, as is the very idea of an omnipotent God. As part of the scientific tradition, I base all my ideas upon evidence, and claim that every one of them can be empirically verified. But since you can only parrot existing ideas and seem unqualified to examine others, how will you ever know that?

I’ll bet that you are the anonymous Amazon “reviewer” who posted a smarmy negative review for my book yesterday, without ever reading it, basing your review on other reviews. If so, you should be ashamed of yourself. I know that if this is so, you will not have the integrity to fess up. Of course, if not so, I apologize in advance for the implication that you might behave in such an infantile and tacky manner.
Not physics-based relationship, new age-based relationship. I am opposed to it because it is seriously flawed in its fundamentals. And it does not fit with Revelation.
Given your intransigence about reading and your dogmatic, unimaginative style of thinking (all okay, of course!) I can only conclude that further conversations with you will consist of your recitation of two layers of dogma, religious and pseudo-scientific. I’m not up for that, so this will be our last exchange of communications.

Thank you for the opportunity to get to know another person who I dislike.
 
Neither do I. Nor do I write them. What you really mean, I guess, is that you do not read anything that might challenge the programs already instilled in your brain. That’s okay, and is the common characteristic of ignorant people throughout the world. And, ignorance is okay too. Enjoy it.
What is curious is that you are attempting to complain about my ignorance when you are asserting your ignorance both later in your post I am quoting and in the “Overwhelming evidence for design” thread.
I read plenty of books that challenge ‘the programs instilled in my brain.’ However, they are not books written by people who pretend to be experts in a field but really are not.
Thank you for noticing the simplification. My point was exactly that-- to simplify matters by proposing only three natural laws. In my book I go even further, proposing only two forces.
I am glad you recognize the oversimplification. Correcting it is another matter. And there are four fundamental forces: strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravitational. Perhaps you could ‘merge’ the two nuclear forces into one, though that would be wrong, and end up with three fundamental forces. I will not waste time reading something that you state from the beginning, before I open a page, is completely at odds with reality.
The 0th Law of Thermodynamics is irrelevant. It is a consequence of the 2nd Law and does not facilitate understanding, so I ignore it. It did not exist when I learned classical physics in the sixties, and I assume it to be the consequence of too many irrelevant mathematicians fiddling with physics, an unfortunate trend.
I do not agree that it is irrelevant. If it were not relevant, then it would not be considered one of the laws of thermodynamics. You are showing quite some disdain for theories to be modified, did your Beon theory exist as it stands today when you first invented it, whenever that was? If it has been molded, I suppose then that you should hate your own theory because it was not perfect to begin with. :rolleyes:
Your attempts to claim that you’ve introduced time into the laws of thermodynamics are puerile. Show the math.
These two certainly stem from the 1st Law
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conduction
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation
Note the time-dependence of these equations. Is that math enough for you, or would you prefer published journals? Or books? This PDF goes through some of the time-dependent, non-equilibrium thermodynamics (which I hope you recognize (a) the difference between non-equilibrium and equilibrium thermodynamics and (b) that the universe falls into non-equilibrium thermodynamics).
As you readily admit, you are simplifying things in your book. And by simplifying things, you are deriving largely erroneous solutions to ‘problems’ you personally have with physics. I hope that somewhere in your book you state that what you are writing/explaining is an over-simplification of the real world. If not, then you are genuinely, possibly intentionally, misleading your readers.
My book describes the nature of dark energy and its relationship to the process of creation. You’ll never know about that, however. Rejoice in your self-perpetuated ignorance.
But you are only speculating what dark energy is to fit your agenda. No rational being would accept your definition as absolutely true just because you say so. You have no physical evidence to even suggest what dark energy actually is. No one does. That evidence does not exist.
All of my ideas are speculative and hypothetical, as is the very idea of an omnipotent God. As part of the scientific tradition, I base all my ideas upon evidence, and claim that every one of them can be empirically verified. But since you can only parrot existing ideas and seem unqualified to examine others, how will you ever know that?
You are ideas can only be speculative, and thus no one should take your hypotheses very seriously. I seriously doubt your theory of dark energy → matter conversion could ever be proven
I’ll bet that you are the anonymous Amazon “reviewer” who posted a smarmy negative review for my book yesterday, without ever reading it, basing your review on other reviews. If so, you should be ashamed of yourself. I know that if this is so, you will not have the integrity to fess up. Of course, if not so, I apologize in advance for the implication that you might behave in such an infantile and tacky manner.
No I am not. I have not been on Amazon to look at your book, or any other non-physics book. I was on there a few days ago contemplating spending the $160 on Toro’s Riemann Solvers text, but I did not write the negative review–generally, I do not review books regardless of my opinion of them as my opinion may not be common with the other reviewers and my opinion of a book can change (like Daijiro Yoshioka’s Stat Mech text, I hated it at first and now I enjoy it). While I do not write books (though I have thought of writing some physics texts, but that steals time from research 🤷), I do know that negative reviews are miserable.
Given your intransigence about reading and your dogmatic, unimaginative style of thinking (all okay, of course!) I can only conclude that further conversations with you will consist of your recitation of two layers of dogma, religious and pseudo-scientific. I’m not up for that, so this will be our last exchange of communications.
Again, refer back to the first quoted line of yours in this post. You are the one who is being ignorant. Your views on physics and your religion are being challenged, so what do you do: follow your normal modus operandi and quit.
 
The human ability to reason invented math.

Cone, circle, square, pi and irrational numbers were invented by our ability to reason.

Pi and circle do not exist outside of the human mind.

They were invented to measure to earth, geometry,
 
The human ability to reason invented math.

Cone, circle, square, pi and irrational numbers were invented by our ability to reason.

Pi and circle do not exist outside of the human mind.

They were invented to measure to earth, geometry,
But of course, reason is using the data it receives from our observations. And fortuitously we have learned by baby steps. Tens of thousands of years ago, men looked up to the heavens and observed the movement of the lights in the sky. From these they learned to understand and gained the confidence to predict. Had they been able to observe what our great telescopes can show us, they would have been reduced to despair.
 
Human reason invented math.

Human reason is able to see the reason in the physical world and the physical laws.

In terms of evidence, both kinds of reasons must have been developed by being(s) of “super-reasonable” powers.
 
JerBear Meaux

Strictly speaking in a philosophy thread, no.

Our ability to reason was implanted in us and in the physical world.

Following the evidence, we are limited to saying that being(s) possessing reason and the power to implant it exists. Other than that, we do not know much about that/those supra-rational being(s).

The evidence suggests that the being(s) possess much higher grades of being than merely rationality.

Again, I am thinking out loud and am not a loud mouth.

From a Catholic point of view, GOD!
 
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