I find it difficult to evaluate scientific logic arguments (propositions) when they are placed in context of depictions of qualities of a Creator or godhead, even if the assumption is made that such creative deity is the highest exemplar of Supreme Rational Logician and brings into existence nothing but .. logical perfect relations and entities.

Metaphysics considerations can only imagine propositions and then ask questions. It cannot generate objective results and absolute answers.

Even if cross compared with mathematical or geometric framings ... there is no way to realistically educe comments to the current question, when done in light of personal unverifiable qualities a writer would have of their own image of an ultimate "creator".

    Dear Kevin,

    thank you for sharing your essay, which I found very interesting and pleasurable to read.

    You write that

    > Some laws leave us with the impression that the situation could have been otherwise, whereas there are other laws for which it is more or less inconceivable that they could have been different (Hogan, 2000). For example, one might be able to imagine that the gravitational force could be weaker or stronger (with Newton's gravitational constant having a different value), or that the speed of light could be much slower, but it is far more difficult to imagine that two times two could be something other than four, or that an object could have a left side without there being a right side.

    I enjoyed that you state that it's "more difficult to imagine" and not impossible that even mathematics could be different. In my text about absolute relativism and Nagarjuna I approach similar questions, but from a philosophical point of view.

    All the best, I wish you luck with your paper.

    Francesco D'Isa

      Dr. Knuth:

      What do you think of the music of the spheres - the relation of orbital measures to the harmonic musical scale that is pleasing to humans?

      I suggest that questioning why should wait until at least we have a unity in R and QM - the next ToE. Until then all this is just metaphysics.

      Hodge

      Thank you so much for your kind words Cristi. In retrospect, it would have been good to expand the short section on the information-based perspective. This is my perspective, and I did not want to run the risk of it dominating the essay, which was much more of an exploration of ideas. I look forward to reading your essay, and I am delighted to see that it is rated quite well.

      Dear Inés,

      Thank you for your kind words, and your interesting perspective on my essay. I am intrigued and am eager to read your essay. Thank you again!

      Dear Branko,

      Thank you for your comments.

      "There is a typo in the table for Mercury."

      Oh no! Apparently, adding 4 is still not one of my strengths!

      Thank you for pointing me to your papers on the Koide formula. This is a topic of great interest for me, and my graduate student James Walsh and I have made some progress toward understanding this result using Influence Theory, although it is still premature to publish.

      Thank you again!

      Thank you for your comments.

      The creator was invoked for three reasons. First, because the idea of a creator has been forefront in our early attempts to understand the universe. And the idea has not quite gone away, where even in the scientific community we find it transformed into the concept of universe as "computer simulation".

      Second, since antiquity, many thinkers who have granted a creator with ultimate power have maintained that a creator must be consistent. This insistence on consistency is critical, and its importance even to those who insist on a creator must be emphasized. Third, the laws of physics appear to be fine-tuned to life. This is not problematic if there is a multiverse and we just happen to live in one of the nice universes. BUT if the laws of physics are derivable from consistency requirements, which may very well be the case, then there is no reason for this universe to be life-friendly. This is a problem.

      Thank you for your comments.

      Thank you Francesco, for your comments.

      I agree. The word impossible is a very hard constraint. I don't feel I understand things well enough to make such strong statements.

      I look forward to reading your work.

      Thank you again!

      Dear Kevin,

      Thanks for a very interesting meditation on the nature of fundamental laws and where they come from. You make an excellent point, that it can be hard even to distinguish between what's determined by some underlying logic and what's just accidental.

      I see that the main theme of your work gets mentioned only briefly - i.e. that much of the mathematical structure of physics is derivable from consistency requirements inherent in the nature of quantitative information. The question you raise here at the end is whether this kind of approach can possibly explain the "fine-tuning" of many different physical parameters needed to support a habitable universe.

      My current essay deals with many of the same questions, and also focuses on fine-tuning, though not in relation to the existence of life. I try to show that the contingent aspects of physics - those not derivable from consistency - can in principle be explained by another basic requirement relating to information, its contextuality. I argue that no kind of information can be measured, or even meaningfully defined, apart from a context of other related kinds of information. Since this contextual information must also be empirically determinable, in other contexts, this sets very strong constraints on the structure of any universe that can define and measure any type of information.

      I hope you'll take a look and let me know if the argument makes sense to you. Among other things, it offers an interesting perspective on your opening question - how and why do things "obey" the laws of physics?

      Thanks again for your thoughtful and entertaining contribution.

      Conrad

        Author Kevin response to James Rose objections on the use of the word' God the Creator'.He still did not use the word but only as godhead! May i say that Nature is supreme and it has logic in its cosmic thinking of creating this beautiful Universe and then chosing Man to appear billion of years after the creation. There too is a logic behind the creation of the Earth around the star , our Sun.We have done nothing as human beings to even add an iaota to this logical creation. To add to Rose objections, may i add the ancient ancestors of ours in the Indian continent like Bhaskar who gave the correct value for the speed of light by just meditating and looking inwards hard and full of sacrifice and conscientious labour. Similar is the recognition to such anonymous wise men we have had who could visualise the force concept of gravity long before it was so recorded by modern science, as developed only during past atmost 1000 years. I too am an experimental Physicist and we know the history how philosophy gave rise to Physics and other sciences, as we branched of Physics from philosophy. Man is a thinker and thoughts have their own neurons working behind in the brain. Man has understood the understanding of such marvels of Nature gradually and i feel we have a lot of work ahead left in differnt branches of science.Best thinking bu us too takes place between gaps in the train of thoughts when cosmos is free to interact with us more effectively. Einstein alimony in support of this argument!

        In our age group, we consider Biology to depend on Physics as primary to the tools used to understand basically what happens in living systems , relative to what goes on natural processes we observe through using Physics. One day, it may become possible for a Physicist to learn from a Biologist as to how things need to be understood!

        Hope author and other commentators react to my posting here and i do not mind even a strong rebuttal and criticism of views experessed by me!

        Dear Kevin,

        I liked your essay very much. Wheeler said that the greatest advance in science by Newton was, that he was able to separate the contingent properties from the lawful properties.

        The connections of the physical constants is very interesting. And in the current paradigm they cannot be questioned, since they are part of the god given laws. What is your personal view? What mechanism could fix these constants to the values they have?

        In my essay essay, I adopt some sort of conventionalism like Poincaré: Newton's first law is conventional and enables us to define the fundamental properties of the system: mass and momentum. Only then the second law becomes an empirical law. In my essay I assume that in order to make the first law possible, the universe/environment of a system must be approximately infinite and homogenous or almost empty. By changing universal conditions or near a black whole, the fundamental concepts would change and hence our laws would change. In that sense the laws themselves are contingent depending on the state of the universe.

        I hope you find time to read and comment on my essay.

        Luca

          Hi Kevin,

          Very cool essay -- quite interesting examples!

          I will say you piqued my interest when you started off talking about our laws as 'anthropomorphic', and wished you had gotten back to that issue a bit more. Varying constants is interesting, but doesn't really seem to fall in the 'anthropomorphic' category as I see it. What else did you have in mind when you used that term?

          Also, I suspect you're not merely interested in the values of the constants, but rather other aspects of fundamental physics. I wonder whether you think even the form of our dynamical equations might be too anthropomorphic...?

          Finally, you seem to be considering the possibility that these constants are changing with *time*. Does that mean you see time itself as being more fundamental than the laws we see obeyed at any one moment in our universe? What about space? (Constants could vary over space as well, presumably...)

          Cheers! -Ken

            Nice thinking about gravity Dr Kevin H Knuth

            You are asking Very important questions...."The laws of physics distinguish the probable from the improbable, and separate the possible from the impossible. But is this law-based description of the universe too anthropomorphic? Are we really to believe that when we release a rock from our hand that it is somehow compelled by this decree and thus obliged to fall to the ground? Or are there deeper reasons why the rock does what it does every time it is released?....."

            Hope you will have a look at another Gravity based essay also...

            Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed................ yours is very nice essay best wishes .... I highly appreciate hope your essay and hope for reciprocity ....You may please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

            Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

            -No Isotropy

            -No Homogeneity

            -No Space-time continuum

            -Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

            -No singularities

            -No collisions between bodies

            -No blackholes

            -No warm holes

            -No Bigbang

            -No repulsion between distant Galaxies

            -Non-empty Universe

            -No imaginary or negative time axis

            -No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

            -No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

            -No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

            -No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

            -No many mini Bigbangs

            -No Missing Mass / Dark matter

            -No Dark energy

            -No Bigbang generated CMB detected

            -No Multi-verses

            Here:

            -Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

            -Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

            -All bodies dynamically moving

            -All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

            -Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

            -Single Universe no baby universes

            -Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

            -Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

            -UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

            -Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

            -Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

            -21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

            -Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

            -Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

            - Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

            http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

            I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

            Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

            In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

            I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

            Best

            =snp

              4 days later

              • [deleted]

              • Post #21

              Dear Prof. Knuth,

              very interesting essay, congratulation! I feel that what you say is a good attitute towards a relaxation of classical determinism, still maintained by a major part of the physicalist program.

              Concerning this, I think you might appreciate my essay (https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3017)

              Good job, high rating.

              Best wishes,

              Flavio

                Hi Kevin,

                One section of your essay caught my attention:

                "Kepler was inspired by a comment attributed to Socrates in Plato's Politeia VII where he notes that musical harmony is the sister science to astronomy (vander Schoot, 2001), Kepler worked to relate each of the spheres to a musical harmony."

                Not quite realizing I was relating cosmology to music, I created the graviton as the cosmological equivalent to a guitar string. It surprised me how far I was able to take this.

                Check out my essay "The Thing That is Space-Time" perhaps it should have been titled "The Music of the Ether". I think you will find it interesting and fits with your "Laws?".

                Appreciate it if you can take the time to let me know what you think.

                Thanks for your thought provoking essay on what is fundamental.

                Don Limuti

                  Dear Conrad,

                  Thank you for your comments.

                  I intended in my essay to focus on aspects of the nature of physical law that I had not previously given a great deal of thought. I have found that this essay contest provides a great opportunity to think about things, and in ways, that I would not normally have the time and opportunity for. For this reason, my professional perspectives on physical law took somewhat of a backseat to these thoughts. However, at the end when discussing the fine tuning of the physical constants for life made me consider my information-based perspective. I do not really see how such a perspective could resolve this issue, and that continues to be interesting to me.

                  Thank you for your comments about your perspectives. I look forward to reading your essay.

                  Thank you again!

                  Dear Luca,

                  Thank you for your comments.

                  My current thinking is that much of physical law is derivable in the sense that it represents constraint equations that enforce consistent quantification of physical phenomena. I believe that constants, such as the fine structure constant, are forced by symmetries as well and are derivable. The problem then is that I see no way to explain how these laws are tuned to life. This is something that will require more thought once we better understand the nature of such laws.

                  I look forward to reading your essay.

                  Sincerely,

                  Kevin Knuth