Dear Edwin Klingman - Aug 2
(I wrote a lengthy post yesterday, Aug 1, which seems to have disappeared. I have saved this response offline to be safe. Maybe the other one will turn up. This response will apply to many others who have written on my blog....)
Reading your essay, I totally agree with your notion that the "beauty" of the math does little to prove that a theory is true. There are two ways to show the truth of a theory: Either it is logically necessary, or it corresponds to some observable facts. The beautiful simplicity of a theory might recommend it over a more complicated theory which proves the same thing, but it does not show the truth of it.
The whole point of empirical science is to provide a way of finding the truth of non-logically-necessary statements, statements about the contingent, experiential world of daily routine, the world of personal relationships. A Scottish philosopher at about the end of the 19th century, John Macmurray) remarked that all thought is for the sake of action, and all action is for the sake of relationship.
I am not sure that is 100% correct, but largely on target. It is far more our personal relationships than it is philosophy by itself which compels us to truth-speaking (at least for ordinary folks, which most of the time is all of us). When we become inconsistent in relationships we often pay a high price - relatives and friends get mad. Philosophy, to be helpful, must filter down (or up) to ordinary life, family, job, religion, etc. That means it must conform to observable fact as well as abstract logic.
As you quote Smolin, "There is a cheapness at the core of any claim that our universe is ultimately explained by another, more perfect world standing apart from everything we perceive." Exactly. It renders "the boundary between science and mysticism porous."
I begin to question your paper when you say things like, "...we can assume that only one real field existed initially. If so, it could evolve only through self-interaction."
That, I think, is the real challenge for your view - showing in what sense "fields" can have a personal identity (which is what you seem to imply). The cosmological argument for God is workable, I think. I have my doubts that a similar argument can work from within the cosmos. On the cosmological argument, we would not evolve only through self-interaction. Our evolving first would be caused by our intelligent designer existing outside the cosmos of contingent existence (natural law) and then would be in freewill partnership and cooperation with our intelligent designer (moral law). The goal of it all would be a community: the kingdom of heaven, a community based on love (the two great commandments - to love God and neighbor). The natural world functions primarily as the stage upon which the community is to happen.
You are, of course, taking the non-theological approach, or, at least as you say, trying as far as possible, to work out things with only what a secular view can work with. (Would you say that the word 'secular' fits your paper?) My essay was written to challenge precisely that assumption, that we can logically or empirically justify and explain the existence of science without the God-assumption.
There is no solely logical argument that God exists. The ontological argument fails, I think. The cosmological argument proves only that it is not apriori irrational to believe in God. The case from then on depends on the empirical evidence, personal experience, the testimony of others, and revelation (God making himself known).
So, metaphysics, in my view, tries to answer the question, "What must we assume to be true in order for the project of empirical science (i.e., a rational cosmos) to make sense?" I do not take the Greek approach, which is typical of the pagan world, asking, "What is the nature of pure Being?" That, I suspect, is an impossible question to answer, leading nowhere.
The case for gravity, or any other aspect of the cosmos, such as space itself (as other contestants are trying to develop), being a cause, especially a cause with freewill, intelligence, and purpose, seems to me a bit daunting, much more so than the case for God acting from outside the contingent cosmos. I will try to address that later.
Blessings, Earle