pavement
Why is there order instead of disorder? Seriously. What gives scientists the confidence to make predictions and formulate hypotheses? On a more pedestrian level, to borrow an analogy from Hume, why should we believe that we’ll achieve the same result the 50th time we roll a cue ball toward an 8-ball after we’ve experienced the same thing 49 times? We could argue causality, but really all we’re experiencing is the same events happening in sequence over and over again, there’s no direct evidence of causation. We could just be experiencing an abnormally long series of coincidences, with no actual connection.
Applied to science, why do scientists search for things like a unification of the four fundamental forces? I mean, why gives them the confidence that there will be a solution? There have certainly been scientific watershed moments in the past, like the advent of Newtonian physics and the rise of relativity, that unified seemingly disparate elements of the universe, but what makes a rational scientist think lightning will strike again, so to speak, and that the pursuit of further unification will be fruitful?
Fundamentally, what gives us any confidence to expect the universe will operate according to principles and laws? I have a hunch most modern scientists would punt; they would say something to the effect that it’s rational, or that those are the principles on which science is based, but wouldn’t those answers just be begging the question? If it’s “only rational,” what makes us think we can trust our reason? Even besides the philosophical arguments, evolutionarily-speaking, we’re the product of an amazing series of coincidences–how have our minds, with such a capacity for and attraction to reason and order, emerged from such chaotic beginnings? I alluded to scientists having an innate attraction to theories that are elegant and economical, that can explain a lot of phenomena relatively simply–Where does that attraction come from?
Just some recent thoughts. Christians have compelling answers for all these questions; I want to know what secular scientists have to say. I’ll be researching this in the weeks to come…