Mathematics and the Universe

[CoxRox]

What is keeping these laws stable? Why do we call them laws?

Why do we call it the "universe" as in "the word" as in "in the beginning was 'the word?'" The language of early science is rife with such linguistic framings. Perhaps it helped people avoid the fate of Giordano Bruno, whom the church burned at the stake for the crime of teaching Copernicus's "heresy" of a scientifically-based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.

So they are called "laws" as in "universal laws" as in "laws of the universe" as in "laws of creation" as in "laws of God." Big deal. Go study quantum mechanics. Einstein and other religious nuts said it could not be correct because it is not orderly and "God does not play dice with the universe ... blah blah blah." But they were proven wrong. That chaotic step funtion I mentioned can be observed.

As to "why predictably repeatable reactions," alternate realities might have environments that do not have orderly interactions, and no life. This one, coincidentally, does. In a chaotic field of existence, it is inevitable that order will be apparent somewhere within that field. Chances are the subset of predictably repeatable interactions would exist, and that we would exist and be just this confused. That's all there is to it.

I think (even with my sparse knowledge of physics) that there's more to this than words and their meanings. This may give you an idea of where I am coming from - to quote Paul Davies:

"If beauty is entirely biologically programmed, selected for its survival value alone, it is all the more surprising to see it re-emerge in the esoteric world of fundamental physics, which has no direct connection with biology. On the other hand, if beauty is more than mere biology at work, if our aesthetic appreciation stems from contact with something firmer and more pervasive, then it is surely a fact of major significance that the fundamental laws of the universe seem to reflect this 'something'"

- Paul Davies, in The Mind of God, p. 176

It will be interesting to see how Stenger deals with this subject.