Scientific laws are used fallaciously by religious people, while it is technically personal incredulity, it is also a purposeful misrepresentation of scientific laws. Often they cite a law of logic, ironically these evolved in the brain because they worked well enough for survival.
Laws of logic and laws of physics are two very different things, and neither is absolute. The word absolute does not describe scientific laws in any way, the laws always change when new information is acquired.
The laws of logic change less often because we have essentially come to understand everything about the brain, and evolution is a slow process so new laws don't appear often. But the most annoying fallacy used is applying the logical law of noncontradiction to physics.
The law of noncontradiction is a logical law that allowed the brain to maintain a more stable level of sanity. It evolved early on, prior to other social traits.
The law simply states that one thing cannot equal a contradictory term, such as 1 and -1, or 1 and 0. This helps the brain filter out what it thinks is misreported information, the brain can choose to ignore this law with conscious efforts.
For this reason, the very contradictory study of quantum physics is difficult for a brain to comprehend, which it why the theory is mostly physical laws. Physics can, and often does, contradict itself.
On the quantum level there are more contradictions than any other field of study, so we know that the laws of logic do not apply to the physical. The laws of logic are phenomena of the brain, the laws of physics are mathematical constructs describing predictable behavior of the universe.
The laws of physics are constantly being changed, updated to include new information. Gravity is the simplest example, as we saw the advent of relativity to make gravity actually work outside of our atmosphere.
Yes, the laws of gravity changed, the theory of gravity is not complete enough for us to even be close to having a comprehensive law, so this is expected to happen a lot. But a lesser known and more complex one is light speed.
Originally light was clocked at a specific speed, and after clocking it many times it was assumed that the speed of light was a constant. Notice this is not a law, this is something we mistook for a constant.
We also assumed that light speed was the fastest possible speed for any particle. Recently we discovered that the speed of light is also relative, and that many particles move faster.
Not to mention, the edges of this universe are moving apart faster than the speed of light, this means that the universe itself is moving faster than the speed of light. Ultimately it destroys the notion that scientific laws are absolute or constant.
The laws are our constructs, which we created to help predict the predictable behaviors of the universe, and that's all they really are.
No comments:
Post a Comment