01.25.06
Religion has long taken aim at Science in an attempt to confuse and disorient otherwise rational people with circular double-talk and mystical nonsense. The reason for this offensive tactic is obvious; science systematically debunks the superstitious mysticism of religion with facts. So in retaliation, religion attempts to undermine the veracity of science so that the ignorant observer will look upon those facts with skepticism, in turn implying that religion isn't as baseless as it actually is. It's a classic case of the prosecution spending its entire case trying to disprove the defense's evidence, without ever supplying any evidence of its own.
Empirically, there is no doubt that if I drop a stone from the top of a ladder on Earth, it will descend toward the ground at 9.7801 meters-per-second-per-second. Not even the most devout theologian would attempt to disprove that scientific fact. Assuming identical conditions, this scientific fact is consistently reproducible; it is this consistent reproducibility, in turn, that lays the very foundation for modern science. There is no question that the precepts of science observably function in the same manner under the same conditions -- a stone will always fall at 9.7801 m/sē on the Earth.
Only recently, and only because a friend of mine posed the issue, have I begun to confront a more profound question: why is science observably reproducible? Obviously, this questions moves beyond the realm of science proper and into the metaphysical sphere of epistemological and ontological philosophy. It does not question or attempt to undermine science itself, but only raises the question of why science does, in fact, work consistently.
The issue of why science works initially came about within the context of a debate over the existence of a god. As per my usual stance, I was posing the standard evidence against a god's existence; and while not directly countering with any specific arguments for a standard religious conception of "god," my friend posited an intriguing philosophical suggestion.
If the universe is truly random, he asked, then why are the results of similar situations not equally random; what is it that makes every stone fall at 9.7801 meters-per-second-squared near the surface of the Earth, rather than one stone falling, while one floats idly, while another spirals off into the cosmos? Moreover, why do the rules of logic function consistently so as to allow for the existence of "logic" in the first place?
I have come to think of this argument as the Consistency Theorem.
My first argument was that science is actually the product of human experience; if the human animal had never evolved, there would be no "science" per se because there would be no consciousness to experience the effects of the physical world and obverse them as rules at all. Of course, it is only logical to assume that if the human species had never evolved, a stone would still at 9.7801 m/sē near the surface of the Earth. The rules of science, then, would still function consistently whether they were being consciously experienced and observed as "rules" or not.
Firstly, if one does so desire to assume that some entity initiated the rules of science, then assigning the nomenclature of "god" to that entity is entirely arbitrary and potentially dangerous. The notion of an entity that is simply responsible for the consistent reproducibility of scientific facts is in no other way associated with the characteristics usually attributed to the religious conceptions of a "god." Such an entity need not be an immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, or even conscious being; it could just as easily be called a Stupendous Gringleblatt, an Invisible Pink Unicorn, or the Force of Science Itself.
Additionally, the rules of science are not mutually identical in all cases. While an object will be drawn toward the ground when it is near the surface of a planet, the specific gravity on Earth (9.7801 m/sē) is not the same as the specific gravity on Jupiter (23.12 m/sē); as such, the weight of an object on Earth would be different than the weight of the same object on Jupiter. Therefore, it becomes clear that, in the same way that the mind is a function of the physical structure of the brain, the precepts of science operate as a function of the physical reality with which they are associated.
Of course, this still does not explain why an object will always be drawn toward the ground when it is near the surface of a planet, rather than floating still, or imploding. Asking the question of why, however, assumes that a reason or cause does, in fact, exist to account for the observable reproducibility of scientific precepts; of course, it is equally possible and far more likely that no reason or cause exists at all.
The very question of why -- and the entire field of philosophy from which it stems -- is a product of our distinctly human need to create a sense of order and purpose in a universe that we perceive as otherwise meaningless and chaotic. Of course, the notions of "order" and "chaos" are also products of human perception, implying further that the search for an ultimate external why may, in fact, be fruitless. Moreover, the entire foundation of "logic" is itself another human construct; it is a method of thought, and therefore exists nowhere in nature outside of the human mind.
This is not an attempt to trivialize the very valid question of consistency. Instead, I submit that the obversable reproducibility of the rules of science in the universe is merely the random outcome of the physical formation of the universe. If those rules operated differently, in a way that we today would not even consider them "rules" -- if, for instance, an object didn't always fall to the ground at 9.8 m/sē on Earth, but rather sometimes floated in midair and other times shot out into space, with no discernable predictability according to our current understanding of the rules of physics -- then our tendency toward identifying patterns would inevitably find some other predictable method of determining outcomes which we would call "science" instead.
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