Mathematics and the Universe

[Darwinian]

The problem lies with the limitations of the English language. { bow }

[CoxRox]

I'm sure we can get the meaning out if we try. When I think of weather conditions, they are chaotic, they fluctuate. These laws or conditions are quite different. Why I wonder?

[Purple Rabbit]

Let's try and clarify the term 'laws' of physics. Earlier it was said they are not 'laws' in the sense that we usually use the term. I understand it to mean this. Correct me if I'm wrong:

These 'laws' or 'forces' are 'set' or constrained in some way so that they don't fluctuate- hence why we can understand/explain them via mathematical equations (and hence why we are in existence and pondering them). It's hard to visualise or comprehend even one of these laws, being able to stay 'fixed'. If we think of a constant temperature via our central heating, there are controls that regulate the temperature and we manipulate the heating system to maintain the temperature we require. (The temperature is measured via numbers). In nature, heat fluctuates depending on the weather conditions than vary all the time. Why do these laws NOT fluctuate if all of nature and the universe is random, etc? This is the 'crux' of the matter for me that I am trying to understand with my limited knowledge of physics and maths.

Let's have a shot at this.

A law of nature basically is a pattern observed to always hold in nature. The pattern can be about anything, the way crystals of sulphur grow, the ratio between heat produced and work done, that a moving magnet induces an electric current and that vice versa an electric current induces magnetism. Laws of nature can be about things that keep constant (for example the energy of a closed system) or about things that change (the force of gravity between to massess as they move away from each other, or the apparant brightness of a star at different distances from it).

With the laws of nature it is possible to predict what happens in a predefined situation. For example it is possible to predict fairly accurately the trajectory of a space probe when you know how gravity acts on the probe.

Above I said that laws of nature always hold. But many laws established by observation do not live up to that criterion, they depend on all kinds of other factors. In general though, scientists refer to the immutable princples/patterns when they talk about the laws of nature. For instance that the force of gravity between any two objects with mass is inversely squared to the distance of these two objects. These laws do not require someone pulling levers and pushing buttons. They are what they are and science studies how they are. Also science tries to relate all these laws to each other. What if the two objects are magnets? Does that affect the force of gravity? And what if the objects spin? By doing all this cross checking a framework of interwoven laws of nature is wrought. Mind boggling patterns and symmetries have thus been found: the equivalence of matter and energy as expressed by Einstein's E=mc^2. The dualistic nature of elementary particles as particles and as waves. Some of these frameworks have been given names (rather sober ones like the Standard Model or fancy ones like Quantum Chromodynamics).

The framework of immutable rules (about the way things vary or don't vary in nature) as far as we know hold in every part of the universe. The universe may look like chaos with exploding stars, dust clouds, planets with life on it, hot boliing geysers, volcanos, the weather and tidal waves. But all this 'chaos' isn't what it seems, every single law of the framework is obeyed by this chaos. Not a single atom in a cloud is free from the gravitational pull of the earth, not a single foton in the inside of the sun is free from the laws of quatum mechanics. All the variation and chaos and change is a result of these patterns we call the laws of nature.

So far science has found four fundamental forces in nature: gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force. Although some speculation is involved, it is expected from the nature of these forces at high energies that they somewhere along the energy scale merge into one mother of all forces. A force that existed at the beginning of the big bang.

[CoxRox]

Thank you for your reply Purple Rabbit. Let me digest it and I'll no doubt have some more questions tomorrow.

---

I've just found this link regarding our book 'God: The failed hypothesis':

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/victor_ste...ypothesis/

The podcast will discuss the book and amonst other things:

'where the laws of physics come from if not from a divine lawgiver'.

I'll give it a listen


Does this mean I don't need to read the book?

[Darwinian]

No!!!!!

[CoxRox]

I'm just listening to it now. It's very interesting and whetting my appetite.

[CoxRox]

Purple Rabbit, these 'laws' are explained in our book we have chosen:
'God: The Failed Hypothesis'. No doubt what you have said, will be covered in detail by Stenger. We can discuss this once we've read the book. Thanks again.

[infidel666]

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.

[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.

[infidel666]

I also think it is significant that the "fundamental" physics that is elegantly expressed arose from theory instead of experimentation, and is elegant because our minds seek symmetry. Some of that theory, such as relativity, has been taken as confirmed by certain observable phenomenon at the macroscopic level. But more advanced physics, and here I am speaking of quantum mechanics in particular, arose purely from experimental observance of extremely surprising, baffling phenomenon that cannot be described elegantly in mathematics. The theoretical school of physics cried foul as the experimental physicists presented their findings. But that theoretical school has been discredited to a large degree.

Her is what you find in quantum mechanics. You observe a small particle's position. It is stationary in that position. Then you look away briefly and observe it again. It is still in the same place. Then look away again for a a longer period of time. When you look back the particle has moved. Repeat and record the positions. You find there is an area in which the particle seems to move around.

Why does the particle not move when you are observing it? Perhaps it is because the act of observing it changes the nature of the particle. Observing the particle's position certainly seems to fix its position while it is being observed. And when you look away for a time and then observe the particle, why does it's position change? And why can't you predict the position?

Feynman suggested that there are many paths the particle can take to arrive at the new position. Which one does it take? Feynman said that it takes all of the paths. Some people took his comment perhaps a bit more seriously than he meant it, and said there must be multiple realities, and that observing the particle selects a subset of all the paths the particle could take to all the possible positions. It is a collision of possibilities in which those that conflict cancel out, and leave those that don't. And that is why I talk about unharmonius interractions not existing, especially at the macroscopic level. The interractions take on an elegant appearance as we observe them. But it breaks down a bit when the observations are made at the microscopic level.