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A Constant Problem for Physicists
Posted By Stefan Monsaureus
A New York Times op-ed by physicist and communicator of things scientific Paul Davies proclaims the faith of the scientist.
All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
This will surely be spun as heresy in the scientific, rationalist, and nontheist blogosphere, with ample finger-wagging at the absurdity of arguing that each hypothesis amounts to an exercise in faith. But, there is a constant problem in physics that lends comfort to those clinging to a deistic view of the universe.
Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational.
If there is any faith among scientists, though, it is perhaps that continued investigation and exploration will yield answers to these mysteries, and a rational explanation for the existence of these seemingly arbitrary (albeit anthropically “fine-tuned”) properties of our universe.
In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
Alas, Timaeus’ demiurge may be relegated to the purgatory into which all gods of the gaps are ultimately banished by science. But such discourses on the quintessentials of metaphysics abet a deistic understanding of the universe. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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24 November 2007
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