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Where Do the Laws of Nature Come From?
mlimber writes "The NYTimes science section has up an interesting article discussing the nature of scientific laws. It comes partly in reply to physicist Paul Davies, whose recent op-ed in same paper lit up the blogosphere and solicited flurry of reader responses to the editorial page. It asks, 'Are [laws of nature] merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?' The current article proceeds to survey different views on the matter. The author seems to be poking fun at himself by quoting Richard Feynman's epigram, 'Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.'"
Obviously, the Laws of Nature came up in a big game of Nomic.
Next question please.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Four different forces, superstrings, antineutrinos, strange quarks, neutralinos, gluons, and 26 dimensions.
The laws of physics are clearly the result of a bureaucracy.
if great minds have grappled with a given subject matter and the answer has remained inconclusive to them, then it is certain that a definitive absolute final answer to the mystery will be found in the comments section of slashdot
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
remove the above poster for reprogramming before any of the other subjects notice
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah too bad.
On a more serius note. The laws of nature were written by God. After writing them he set about building a Universe to the specifications allowed by those laws.
Either that or he built a universe, made it work and these laws are just documenting how his code functions.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Look on the even brighter side: maybe the galactic operator is using Windows, and Ctrl-C will just copy our universe.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
One day, in a bright blue sky, I saw a cursor.
No kidding - I looked up, and in the middle of the air, I saw the standard Windows cursor just sitting there. It was as though Whatever had just gotten up to go take a leak and left the cursor sitting there in the middle of the sky. Reality was falling apart. I was going crazy.
I thought, "Wait, what the fuck is that?", and then the seagull banked, showing that it was in fact a bird in the air, and reality was mostly intact.
It was a very bizarre moment.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.