Dear Donald,

A very interesting question!

My abrupt contemplation gave me the question:

" How the Laws of Nature were Created?"

Regards,

Panagiotis Stefanides

Dear Issam,

This is a very interesting question. Here are my viewpoint/speculations

on this question.

I see two streams of philsophical/scientific views on this. The Anaximandes/Heraclitus/Aristotle/Leibniz/Goethe/Bergson/Peirce/Poincare/Whitehead/Edington/ Bohm etc stream and the Pythagoras/Parmenides/Plato/Spinoza/Hilbert/Einstein/Barbour

The first stream beleives that the ultimate reality, the ground of being is change/creativity and it is not fully reducible in principle to static knowledge: mathematics. The second stream beleives that the ultimate reality, the ground of being does not change and it is reducible in principle to mathematical laws of nature. Since 1926, there is a majority of physicists who think that quantum world is not fully deterministic, although Einstein did not agree with this majority and has always interpreted the experimental results of quantum theory, the use of probability as the sign that the theory is incomplete. Einstein's god, the god that do not play with dices, was Spinoza's god , the unchanging laws of physics. For Einstein as for Parmenides perceived changes are an observer effects and only exist from a observational point of view. For the Heraclitean scientists, the laws of nature exist, but they express the unchanging relations existing in Nature. They do not talk about ultimate reality, existence as such but are about the bound of existence, the invariant relations. They believe that reality is not completely deterministic but has an inderterministic part that cannot be reduced. They understood human freedom as an expression the part of nature that cannot be deterninistically reduced. Darwin's theory of evolution is based on the concept of irreductive variation in nature. The platonic view of creation, is the creation of the begining of the illusion of change. The Anaximandes's view of creation is a process of gradual creation from the an initial undiscriminated/primordial chaos/fire/apeiron and it is still continuing today in the mind of human in their process of civilisation creation. The laws of nature are gradually created and human societal laws are new form of laws enabling new form of freedom. The emergence of life is the beginning of a new physics far from the condition of equilibrium, it is a state of extended criticallity, a real where the current laws of quantum physics allows an astronomical explosion of possibilities. The evolution of life, is the evolution of the organism body as the evolution of biological laws which provides now physical bound for the life phenomena. A relational physics of life not based on a finite set of law but based on the creation of new bound for the evolution of life. The origin of the cosmos is not seen as a singularity but as a gradual process of creation of laws of physics constraining the initial unbounded chaos. Leibniz's principle of maximum harmony could be used to find the creative logic which is probably implicit in the equation of general...

Dear Louis

Thank you for you reply, which is, like you said, is a mixture of philosophy, religion, science and speculation.

You may have noticed in the introduction to my question that not once the word God was mentioned-apart from a reference at the end to the book from which this question was inspired. It is not even under 'topics' to the question. That was deliberate, because I am really looking for a purely and fundamentally scientific answers. Often, on RG I have noticed that the issue of God and religion is a highly emotional subject that can cause problems with theists and atheists alike. I believe the issue of God is a very personal one and best left out of this discussion.

Once again, dear Louis, I thank you for your viewpoint which I do find interesting especially the historical side of it.

Issam,

I used the word "GOD" in a very specific manner: "utlimate reality". This use of the word "GOD" is common in metaphysics and your question is fundamentally a metaphysical question. The word "GOD" is used in different other traditions with that meaning but also a lot of other different meanings. The word "GOD" in my last post could be replaced at every location by "ultimate reality", "ground of reality", "ground of being". For historical reasons, most scientists stay away from the "GOD" word and stay away from the word "metaphysics" but they are usually not dealing with such wide question. I agree with you that "ultimate reality" leave people cold while the "GOD" world is dynamite. Only for that, it is better to avoid it.

Regards,

Issam,

As you suggested, obviously, the laws of physics---as we know them today---cannot create anything, and already for the fathers of the Scientific Revolution this answer was obvious.

Unfortunately, we take too seriously philosophical musings by many prominent scientists without proper evaluation of their corresponding abilities. We should understand that the education as well as technical skills important for further (theoretical and applied) development of *existing* theories are quite different from the philosophical education and skills.

Finally, we should also understand that the present, still *very immature*, state of science does not warrant at all many scientific and philosophical pronouncements of many leading scientists.

I am getting rather tired of misspoken comments by people who should know better over the nature of nothing and the supposed paradoxes that result. Nothing cannot exist in an of itself by definition. It is defined as 'Not any thing" . The "thing", and "nothing" are codependent definitions and one cannot exist without the other. If you do not like this mutual co-definition, then please, FEEL FREE TO DEFINE AND USE ANOTHER WORD. To say that something arises out of nothing is just nonsense English devoid of meaning.

Looking at the universe from the inside, we will always be constrained in our interpretation of it by Godel's incompleteness theorems, which has two interpretations with regard to our universe:

1) The argument about thing and nothing may simply reflect the fact that any internally consistent theory will always have some unanswerable questions that can be asked about it.

2) The counter-argument is that the existing discrepancies between quantum mechanics and general relativity arise from the other requirement of the incompleteness theory that any complete theory must contain internal inconsistencies.

My vote is firmly in the former camp, and that a unified consistent theory exists: but it will do nothing at all to resolve the issue of how it came to be.

The argument over the reality or not of a "discovered' law imagined in someones head is likely just another of those meaningless questions, like what is North of the North pole. As an engineer I take a quite pragmatic view: A discovered equation also requires a mechanism to implement it. You did not see the first nuclear reactor boot-strap itself into existence out of equations. Rather it was constructed by engineers out of chunks of matter in just the way the equations required to make it work. What is matter? Well that is the thing, and all the rest is nothing!

Andrew,

`` a unified consistent theory exists: but it will do nothing at all to resolve the issue of how it came to be.``

A logical consequence of the above statement is that the theory can never be completed given that it cannot include the explanation of the theory itself which is necessary part of the universe because by definition universe means all that exists.

Dear Issam,

When I read a phrase like "Because there is the law of gravity," the first thing I get in mind is that there is something called "law of gravity" that the author is telling about as a cause. The result "The universe can and will create itself out of nothing" implies there is a "universe" beside "the law of gravity". As you mentioned it's quite strange to say that something is made out of nothing. Furthermore, and even stranger, if the universe is not there it can't create itself. "can create itself" means the universe is already there in order to take an action-any action including creating itself, if it is possible at all. Non-existence cannot make a deed of any kind, nor it can "plan for future" to say "non-existence will do something"..etc.

Then, there is a lots of things here, leaving us to suggest that the possible problem of the statement because it has missed a last word, maybe. IF it was "else" at the very end it'll read: "Because there is the law of gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing else." and it'll be more logical, I think.

It could it be just a matter of speech to use a word as "nothing". Book writing style is different from papers' style, since books in general are aimed toward broader readers, so in books the language, usually, will use more common and general words. Or it could simply mean that macroscopic things will be created out of non-macroscopic things due to nature of the universe specially the law of gravity, even when the universe is initially made of non-macroscopic things. In such a case it'll make sense, too.

Honestly I haven't read the book yet, but I don't think that a single word or even a phrase in a book requires or suggests a revolution in physics laws, because if it was that important, then the author of the book wouldn't allow anyone -but himself- to explain it first and make every possible (and impossible, sometimes) use of it. This is the human's nature, rather than the universe's.

Regards.

The answer can be found in quantum cosmology models. At the quantum level the Universe (in its early stages) evolves according to Wheeler –DeWitt equation which is an analog of Schrodinger equation that has incorporate elements of General Relativity. One of the solutions of WDW equation namely Vilenkin’s wave function, leads to the conclusion that Universe can effectively tunnel out of nothing. So, because the gravity exists, one can imagine a Universe coming into existence out of nothing.

This is the scenario Hawking (involved himself in quantum cosmology research) had in mind. Hawking (with Hartle) find also a solution of WDW equation that lead to a Universe coming out of nothing, but is more complicate to conceptualize.

@Louis Brassard

Your conclusion is correct. A consistent unified theory cannot be complete. An ant can go through it's whole life surviving by certain rules before being stepped on by a human foot - it's prior theory of the Universe was consistent but incomplete.

But this does not mean a unified theory won't be of benefit via a more straightforward view of the universe along with more tractable methods for computing its properties. It has always struck me as somewhat strange how our current theory is quite simple and straightforward conceptually, but so difficult to compute for all but the simplest case studies. Not that I am in the camp of the "computational" universe, but why would nature arise from such simple principles, without a simple mechanism to enact them? Maybe this is just my engineering bias at play.

Godel's theorems are quite compelling and applicable to a broad range of circumstances that go well beyond mathematics. I for one would propose them as one of the core foundational principles of philosophy.

Godel`s theorem killed Hilbert`s program the illusion that the ground of reality is a logical machine. Hilbert`s program is a kind of logical Laplacianism. But the universe is not deterministic and so it is not generated by a logical engine either.

Nature is a single cosmic evolution and the cosmic creative process necessaritly begin with the creation of what is simpler. What comes next is not included in what is created first. Otherwise there would not be any creation but simply the unfolding of what is already in the law at the beginning which is absurd. I am not a platonist. So the law do not create anything but are created all along the cosmic evolutionary process. What is stabilized during the creation process become laws which are simply habit, patterns of the underlying original flux. Whatever creation happen, it ultimatly come from the same source. If you are creative then you just are a good channeling of the underlying original flux creating the universe.

There are two parameters in the universe which are laws and objects. usually laws cannot create objects from nothing, because even tunneling effect can not brings objects from nothing it must brings them from something. even at quantum dimensions the matter can not be made from nothing . I think what Hawking meant is matter was created from nothing by a wise force (God) , how ? we can not really know this is can noot be covered by our nowadays knowlege but we can say that there may be an emberyo of the universe that made by wise force I prefer to say (God) and then it made to specialized parts as the Nabula theory states or say Big Bang of emberyo. The laws of physics are designed to govern the relation between objects if at the emberyo stage or after its division to the individual parts. I think this is more logical than saying matter is created by physics laws. because this may take to question who design physics laws or lets say science laws. We must realize that there are borders to our knowlege , we can not know everything.

The traditional physics approach assumes the existence of the laws into a timeless platonic realm and of the initial conditions and from there things happens. It is assumed that the world is closed to causality, in other words, all that happens where predetermined in these timeless laws and in this initial conditions. Try to explain that to any one not trained in this crazy idea and they will laugh. Already as far as biological evolution, Darwin had realized that an element of chance/creativity was necessary for explaining novelties. Peirce is one of the first to realize that reality had to have such a fundamental element of chance/creation that cannot be included into any law and that all evolved even the laws which as Scheilling had seen already are cold ashes. More recently Lee Smolin is trying to dress this idea of continuous creation of everything including the laws for unifying physics. But wheeler was playing with such ideas

See: Laws without Laws

http://what-buddha-said.net/library/pdfs/wheeler_law_without_law.pdf

If laws control everything from thermodynamics the entropy in the universe tends to be positive this means that laws will lead the universe to be non uniform system gradually this will destroy its buildings with time. lets say it will be destroyed after a long time if it rebuilt again this requires reversing entropy to make it recycled again. in other words the entropy must be negative which means an outside force must be applied to reverse its tendecy to positive entropy. so the laws needs outside control. they can not change their selves by their selves.

@Louis, Yes the view of a timeless realm with no boundary but initial conditions in my view remains an appealing and worthy approach. Julian Barbour http://platonia.com/ explores one such approach. I found his initial reasoning quite compelling and it continues to inspire the work I do, but I remain unconvinced by where he ended up.

The notion of predetermination though is something I still spend a lot of time pondering (well don''t we all!) The answer could lie in discovering exactly how we perceive the passage of time in this timeless realm. The pragmatic approach aligning with empirical measurement is that outcomes are not predetermined. Perhaps a deterministic trajectory in the timeless realm has multiple solutions as a function of time? Predetermined given complete knowledge of the system, but indeterminate given partial local knowledge? All open questions worthy of more research.

And this all begs the question if such lack of determinism is an illusion, a random selection from a set of possible outcomes, or a "genuine choice" from a set of possible outcomes. Quantum Mechanics says the spatial relationship of the observer and the observed defines the probability set of outcomes, one of which then happens by chance at the act of observation. MRI neurological observations seem to lead to the somewhat disturbing conclusion that this is the correct view: Our notion that we choose to do something might simply be our conscious minds rationalizing the outcome after the event!

I for one am going to continue through life as though I am responsible for my own actions. It is the social and moral thing to do, and in any event there is no denying social accountability for an action even if one perceives you were "made" to do it.

Andrew,

Barbour has already answer on we perceive the passage of time with its idea of time capsule. I am a common sense person and I beleive that all that exist is in the now. The past is the structure of the now. Quantum mechanics is hospitable to free will of particles because it is probabilistic. Denying free will is against common sense. Downward causation exist in all living organisms.

@Donald

The question of Issam as Louis said includes many subjects in it one of them is relegion. your idea about fifth force historically has similarity with an idea of universe expansion in Islam. your idea has many similarities with the idea of expansion of universe found in the holy Quran but instead of falling the Quran indicated that God (Allah) is expanding the sky (universe). So this can give you an idea about what whom you call the fifth force represents of course from the view of Islam.

Issam,

Do you realize that if your question is rephrased as the following one it becomes more interesting?

Does there exist a (new) scientific language (formalism) for which the above question (with the appropriate change in the meaning of "laws") becomes meaningful even in a stronger sense of the "laws" generating the Universe?

I would suggest that such radically new formalism would have to be "informational" (but not in the conventional technical meaning of the term). Why informational is a good topic by itself.

@Donald

If I understand your idea correctly the (falling toward the outer boundary of a FINITE NON-EXPANDING UNIVERSE) This is a dangerous expression, because it means that the universe gradually will tends to tearing, because as we know it is filled of dark matter and its space is not vacuum indeed. if you meant that the outer parts are falling away while the volume of universe still constant with out expansion then gradually the outer parts will separate permanently from inner parts. in this case the dark matter is assumed to have no role in transferring gravity, which contradicts observations. We can not get rid of easily the idea of expansion of universe, what do you think?

@Donald

your idea if I understand it correctly to be applicable the matter which falls down must be redirected to center of universe to reemerge again. This means that the central region is a region of matter emergence. This means there must be a strong non homogeneity in expansion of the universe which not agree with background observation measurements. what do you think?

I think laws of Physics can create and rather have created tremendous things. From aeroplane to road vehicles designs, all are based on the physics phenomenon. Physics is awesome. It creates real miracles.

The laws of physics are important nevertheless they need raw materials to be applicable. the laws can not bring something not found to life. there must be raw materials. The first principle in physics you can not create something from nothing using laws only.

No. Laws of physics just explain the principles which are involved in creation, destruction, regulation and controlling different processes.

@Hamilton

When you say laws can create something and manage the universe, your assumption needs proof it is not just saying that by words. Let's take one of the basic laws and study it's manner because we are scientist aren't we? let's take Hubble's law of expansion of universe and analyze it mathematically. simply v=Hr

as it is clear v is a function of r. differentiating with respect to t gives

a=Hv

this means that the universe is expanding in accelerating manner.now this relation is found from the results of red shift of light. This means that as the photon cross larger distances its red shift is increased. this is an indication that the space is indeed not static , but dynamic because the red shift is a function of r which is the distance that the photon cuts from the source until reaching earth. if the relation was in form of v=constant *t

then we can say it is due to relative accelerated motion between source and earth, but as you can see it takes the form of v=Hr this means that the space it self is in a movement case not in static one. This opposes what you said about the idea of "FINITE NON-EXPANDING UNIVERSE ".

I think its more logical to assume the expansion of the universe than assuming the transfer of matter from borders to the center because then you must explain how that happens and this may make your theory involved in many inconsistencies with the observed data, its just a suggestion.

Then does the law

F=k * m1 * m2 / r^2

creates gravity, as a part of (everything else)? Or does gravity creates the law

F=k * m1 * m2 / r^2

again, as a part of (everything else)?? Which one is the cause and which is the effect?

Ahmed,

We don't understand what gravity is. We just have some numeric 'handles' on it. The same way with energy, mass, etc.

I think Prof Ahmad gave the gravity as an example we can take any other law and ask about who is the cause and who is the effect the laws made forces or the forces made laws? of course according to the suggested theory?

Lev, (What gravity is) wasn't my point here.

Sadeem, yes this is the exact meaning of my question.

We, humans, have created (laws). In nature there is no explicitly written law, but there are many observations that created implications that led us to derive laws. Indeed it seems a far turn to reach (a law), and it is surprising how we got so many laws with such method. There is nothing sure about the idea that says (the laws of nature do exist objectively), at all. To be more specific, our needs to understand our observations led us to invent such things as laws. So laws are part of some other part of humanity.

Do such things have the ability to create, even in our subjective representation? I find it hard to be accepted, because laws are results of human thoughts - laws are not thought by themselves.

Ahmed,

All the laws that we know are about relations of certain measurables that delineate a subset of the universe neglecting everything else. It works within the limit of the process of science. Nature in itself has no measurables.

Thanks Mr. Martin Kovar for the valuable comment. I too think the same way.

http://www.academia.edu/3177176/Epistemic_Evolutionary_and_Physical_Conditions_for_Biological_Information

"The most common misconception of physics is that because laws are inexorable ― that is, no event can disobey laws ― the implication is that laws determine all events.

.

That is not the case. Most of the structures in the universe are undetermined by laws or are accidental. In principle,measurement of initial conditions cannot be determined by laws. Measuring instruments obey physical laws but are not determined by laws. Eddington (1929, p. 260) emphasized this fact in The Nature of the Physical World

: “There is nothing to prevent the assemblage of atomsconstituting a brain from being of itself a thinking object [including free will and consciousness]in virtue of that nature which physics leaves undetermined and undeterminable.” Gell-Mann(1994, p. 134) again pointed this out in The Quark and the Jaguar

: “the effective complexity [of the universe] receives only a small contribution from the fundamental laws. The rest comes from the numerous regularities resulting from ‘frozen accidents.’” The principle condition for physical laws is their inexorability and universality ― the same laws must apply in every place and time,and for every conceivable observer. Furthermore those events that we treat as deterministic areactually probabilistic events, often with such reliable statistics that they are effectivelydeterministic."

All sort of Laws just regulate and explain the principles involved in the processes of creation, destruction, stabilization etc and and do not create anything.

The laws of physics are a tentative to build an ordered explanation of the world and the different processes in it using the human brain and the simplifying tool provided by mathematics( also a creation of our brain)

It so happens that the law of physics , created by the human brain had the capability to create an atomic bomb which could destroy the whole world on which we live.

However many useful inventions have also been the result of their use, from the electricity to the electronic and all the more complex stuff like computers, medical devices , telephones, GPS. Human have been able to reach the moon using the law of physics as close guiding lines and long before that, to travel the oceans.

As is well known since Newton, but is forgotten by many semi-informed contemporarians, any scientific analysis of reality has to discern laws of motion and initial conditions. We belong to the first generation of people who can ask computers to show us sugestive examples of this, such as the one in the linked site.

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ModelForCrystallizationIn2D/

Caroline,

Any device or machine that we build is done by controling the dynamic which depend on laws of nature and on boundary conditions. The laws are fixed but we control the boundary conditions and machine building is the art of setting the boundary conditions. The same with biology. The boundary conditions are not determined by the laws of nature but are frozen accident, selected by natural selection. So the laws of nature are not the source of novelty. Our society are governed by laws but most of what happen in our cities, although it generally respect the laws (I live in Canada), does not explain most of what happen. Look at the car in the street, even though the cars respect the laws of traffic, the traffic patterns are not determined by the laws. It is the same in nature. Laws are respected but they do not determined most of what is happening.

I come back to Issam's explanation of his very question. Here we read:

==================

When asked where gravity came from, Hawking answered "M-theory"

==================

I think the complete thought is something like the following: As we 'know' from M-theory, the world is made from tiny oscillating membranes and these bring about gravity by collective processes which are made possible by the very nature of these membranes. I have only a very superficial acquaintance with "M-theory" so experts may not agree with what I consider the most natural scenario compatible with Hakings short insinuations: M-branes are the substance the world is made of. The are here and were here all the time. They never came into existance but simply are there. For them a mode of existence is possible (due to their very nature) for which no space is needed or only a very tiny amount of space. Each M-brane oscillates between unfolding and collapsing in this tiny space. All M-branes were in this quenched state prior to the big bang. The big bang was a phase transition in which the unfolding tendencies gained the upper hand and made space to be generated at an increasing rate. The result is an expanding universe which is still the state of affairs.

Very probably this is far from being true and not too badly invented at best.

My point here is that it is not a natural idea that laws of nature are simply obeyed 'somehow'. More natural is the idea that they are obeyed since they are simply a property of an underlying process, which actually takes place ('in reality', of course).

One may see the formation of crystals as resulting from obedience to the law which requires each system to minimize its potential energy. In my eyes this is a silly view. The by far better understanding comes from following individual particles and to see what happens to them (as my previously posted demo program allows to see). This view then shows us that patterns in fact can result from laws.

Ulrich,

Your presentation is done with one set of initial position of the molecules. If you choose another set of initial positions, the resulting pattern will be different. So the patterns result from laws + initial positions which are arbitrary.

Thanks Prof. Martin for your the valuable comments. I do agree with your opinion. But in this forum we have scholars with varying background. We have same understanding with a little difference of interpretation about the word "Creation". To me use of this word in the question is subjective instead of objective.

@Louis: You are right, but nevertheless you missed the essential point: The pattern (2D analog of cubic lattice) is virtually independent of the initial conditions if the number of particles is large. Only the geometry of the boundaries and the size and locations of lattice defects are individual, just in real crystalization processes. Also traffic jam patterns are largely defined by laws if we don't restrict this notion to the legal regulations but include 'laws' describing the behavior (e.g. reaction time) of drivers.

The only reasonable way to interpret "create" is as "generate", where the latter should be interpreted "informationally", or algorithmically.

In other words, the "laws" should allow for an algorithmic construction of the Universe, including various objects in it. The only "laws" of this kind I can think of are structural, or formative, ones---those that provide structural (generative) specification for the construction of various objects, including the space, in Nature.

These are *formative* laws, and not the numeric laws. The difference is that the numeric laws provide artificial, non-structural (calculational), "description". Put differently, the numeric laws cannot provide structural, or generative, description, since *they don't postulate any structural units* out of which the Universe can be generated.

Ulrich,

My traffic jam analogy was an analogy and it breaks I agree if you try to explain the drivers.

Lev,

arn't the particles of the standard model (of particle physics) nice structural units?

These allow to explain a lot: formation of stars, star clusters, galaxies, molecular evolution - all formative processes, that only need the laws of these structural units and random initial conditions.

We cetainly don't understand how the 'Universe can be generated out of them', whatever this means.

Ulrich: "arn't the particles of the standard model (of particle physics) nice structural units?"

1. First of all, "particles" do not exists as basic entities, we don't know what they are (what is a photon or an electron?). Even in QFT paticles are epiphenomena.

And second, we must postulate some structural formal entities that are expected to be the mirror copies of the actual entities (e.g. structured events).

In that sense, in contrast to "particles", elementary events exist as basic entities.

2. "These allow to explain a lot"

The issue is not so much the verbal "explanation", but rather the algorithmic, or generative, one.

Ulrich,

But when it comes to explain the transition from the innanimate matter to the animated matter, we are even more puzzled.

Louis, you are of course right when we come to the details. In principle, however, not too much. Fortunately high level life, which would in fact be very hard to understand without guidance, is accomponied by lower level forms: viruses (not yet 'standard life', I know), bacteria, primitive polycellular organisms, .... which offer a plausible route to a partial understanding of life. Great scientists like the late textbook author Albert L. Lehninger help to find the route.

Lev,

when subatomic particles entered the scene of science, nobody had the phantasy to expect the strange properties and behaviors that today the particle physics students learn in their courses. These are not phantasy, these are forced on us by experimental facts and our certainly limited ability to interprete these and to identify the understandable structures in them.

I had the luck to observe the genesis of the standard model when I worked at the university (Munich) in theoretical particle physics. I was a late believer in the new scheme. It looked so far fetched to me in many respects. But following the logic of the experiments convinced also me (who expected that a solution to all the particle puzzles would result from a mathematically clean integration of quantum theory and special relativity; the mathematically non-existent relativistic quantum field theories of the time were not considered candidates).

That you consider the question 'what is a photon or an electron?' an argument, shows that you have no idea how rich the established knowlege on particles already is.

Most work on star formation and galaxy- formation is done with the help of computer simulations, and not by verbal explanation. Although numeric in nature, they show in detail how the generative processes work and that they give what we see in the sky (e.g. the HR-diagrams of star clusters).

"elementary events exist as basic entities"

Old Ernst Mach would have asked "Have you seen them?". I ask "what is the evidence for this statement"? Actually, I'm quite sure to know your answer in esssence. "The best evidence is that nothing else is conceivable, given all this obvious discreteness and all these formative processes around us". So I close this essay by returning to the initial thought. For nobody it was conceivable that one would be confronted with entities behaving so unconventional as subatomic particles do. For a physicist this does not say that these entities have to be abolished. He humbly learns that Nature not always delivers what he expects to get.

Ulrich,

Although, as you admitted, first you were "a late believer in the new scheme. It looked so far fetched to me in many respects", but then you became a firm "believer in the new scheme".

You may not realize it but, ironically, you are not the best defender of "the new scheme" and I don't think you would be chosen as one. ;--)

I'm afraid, you are defending the status quo and it does not need your defense. It is obvious to me that you are the type of person who would always defend the status quo and be proud of it. What else does one need to say?

And please don't consider your defense of the status quo as a contribution to science. ;--)

Lev, it is not your place to speculate here about what type of person I am.

I hope a bit later you will come to this conclusion too.

How can you assume, I would consider my attempts to free you from some misconceptions concerning the nature of particles as a contribution to science?

Ulrich,

What else can I conclude if, without even the basic understanding of the new representational formalism (ETS), you continue to sell me the glory of the present view of Nature espoused by the Standard Model?

By the way, do you know what a *representational formalism* is?

Lev, I'm no longer interested in any discussion with you. Period.

I'm sorry, Ulrich, but unfortunately it's better that way.

Best wishes,

--Lev

I would like to summarize my answer to the question.

The *numeric* laws (the laws as we know them today) cannot "create anything". Why? Because all numeric laws are descriptive and 'calculational'.

Different kinds of laws---capable of "creation"---require explicit postulation, at the very beginning, of the (formal ) structural units out of which the "creation" can proceed. Such kind of constructions have not yet been considered within the present mathematics, whose development has been motivated by the spatial considerations, including various numeric measurement practices.

quote from Time Reborn by Lee Smolin p.146

'' We need the notion of a law only in cases in which a process or experiment has been repeated many times. But to explain these cases, we actually need a lot less than a timeless law. We could get by with something much weaker - say, a principle stating that repeated measurements yield the same outcomes. Not because they are following a law but because the only law is a PRINCIPLE OF PRECEDENCE. Such a principlewould explain all the instances in which determinism by laws work but without forbidding new measurements to yield new outcomes, not predictable from knowledge of the past. ''

''As new states arise in nature, new laws evolve to guide them - which suggest that the fundamental interactions we observe and describe with the Standard Model of Particle Physics resulted from the ''locking in'' of new laws when the states corresponding to elections, quarks, and their relatives first emerged as the universe cooled shortly after the Big Bang.''

Martin,

I meant something more radical than you are working on.

In topological spaces we are still dealing with sets of *points* on which various topologies can be defined.

I meant that we need to considerably extend such set-theoretic approach to mathematics by replacing points with the "structs", which are new (structural) kind of entities. These are indivisible 'temporally' structured entities. They are expected to give rise ( via spatial instantiation) to the more familiar spatial and topological entities.

Donald,

It looks that you have interpreted the concept of law in the question in a more general way. The laws, *as we understand them today* are given basically by various equations, which are of descriptive and not generative ("creative") kind. It is we who (wishfully) interpret them as of "creative" kind.

Martin,

The elements of your "framology" are still sets, and I'm talking about a completely different situation.

Lev,

I agree with you that we need other mathematical structures and there are radical way to build new ones. I also agree that the generative question is central. Where I have reservation is that I do not think that a representation can in itself be creative because any representation is timeless. It can be a vehicle of creation though.

Louis,

That's the whole point: the representation itself has to evolve 'temporally'.

Martin,

You see, set theory is based on the millennia-old view within mathematics which evolved on the basis of spatial considerations (see sections 1 in the first two of my RG publications). In particular, points became the indivisible entities, and various kinds of mathematical structures, including the topological space and the group, are defined on top of sets of points, even though the definition of an algebraic structure involves one or several binary or other kinds of operations.

At the end of 70's, I was faced with the task of developing the concept of "structural" representation (for the needs of pattern recognition). It took me 10 years to gradually realize that the conventional mathematics, including, category theory, does not offer much help in this direction. Why?

If you look at any object in Nature--be it a star or a molecule---it does not appear instantaneously, but rather it evolves gradually to become what it is (it has a formative 'history'). So very gradually it became more or less clear that the most natural way to approach the concept of structural representation is via the struct, a temporal stream of interconnected events of purely ‘informational’ (i.e. non-spatial) nature (the formal definitions are in

http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb/ETSbook/ETS6.pdf).

This concept of *structured event* is not a conventional one. It is motivated by the generalization of the single and unstructured successor operation (in the Peano axioms for natural numbers) to a small finite set of structured "events", which are supposed to reveal, compared to a number, a new, structural, side of reality.

So instead of "points", we are dealing with structs (which are evolving entities).

What should also be of interest to you is that such structs are expected to be a more appropriate starting point for the development of some present approaches to quantum gravity theory.

Martin,

The break appears to be radical: a point is replaced by an evolving structural entity.

You see, as Peano axioms strongly suggest, the concept of natural number is a temporal one, but later on it was embedded in the continuous (spatial) framework, and the temporality was lost.

This new form of representation is supposed to reveal a completely new, scientifically unfamiliar to us, side of reality. But of course, instead of the conventional measurement devices we will need new kinds of tools, structural measurement devices, in some sense similar to the biological sensing mechanisms.

By the way, I now stop taking seriously such thing as sqrt(2) and the corresponding hypotenuse: I believe they are just figments of our imagination and don't have any relation to reality. In general, in this "information" age it is time to reconsider the central role of spatial considerations in our formalisms, and the explanation why they have been so incredibly successful we will get later on when we understand better the underlying structural / temporal, in contrast to the spatial, reality.

Donald,

We created models which are such that nature seem to follow within a certain accuracy. But nature do not follow these models because it is our model that mimic nature. What really make nature behave that way we do not really know.

Martin,

Following your Cauchy sequence example, the key point relates to how the sequence itself arises. For example, taking sqrt (2) or pi, who said that the corresponding sequences themselves are not "artificial"?

In other words, why should we take such sequences seriously, not from the esthetic but from the scientific point of view? Why should we take today, in the information-processing age, very seriously the corresponding hypotenuse and circle?

Of course, my question is not motivated by any nihilism, but by the present need to shift our scientific emphasis from the spatial, or numeric, to the structural / temporal considerations.

So how can we get to the "creative" laws?

There are serious considerations suggesting that the only way is by trying to model formative processes in the Universe, i.e. structural ("informational") processes responsible for the formation and evolution of various objects in Nature, including space itself.

Following the introduction to my question, I want to talk more about the nature of the laws of nature.

" Long ago the philosopher William Paley spoke of the person who had stumbled on a watch on the heath and picked it up, he says that such a person would not be "less surprised to be informed that the watch in his hand was nothing more than the result of the laws of 'metallic nature'. It is a perversion of language to assign any law as the efficient, operative cause of any thing. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode, according to which an agent proceeds: it implies a power; for it is the order, according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing; is nothing."

Quite so. Physical laws cannot create anything. They are a description of what normally happens under certain given conditions. This is surely obvious from the the very first example of physical law that Hawking gives in his book The Grand Design.

The sun rises in the east every day, but this law does not create the sun; nor the planet earth, with east and west. The law is descriptive and predictive but is not creative. Similarly, Newton's law of gravitation does not create gravity or the matter on which gravity acts. In fact, Newton's law does not even explain gravity, as Newton himself realized.

The laws of physics are not only incapable of creating anything; they cannot even cause anything to happen. For instance, Newton's celebrated laws of motion never caused a pool ball to race across the green baize table. That can only be done by people using a pool cue and the action of their own muscles. The laws enable us to analyze the motion, and to map the trajectory of the ball's movement in the future(providing nothing external interferes); but they are powerless to move the ball, let alone bring it into existence."

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God and Stephen Hawking, by John C. Lennox, 2011, Lion Books.

Martin,

By the way, I should emphasize that my ideas have not sprung out of nowhere, or out of "top of my head". It took many years to realize the intrinsic limitations of, for example, the vector space model to capture structural side of reality. And as you mentioned earlier, no self-respecting serious scientist would want to waste his productive life on some unsubstantiated quirks of his imagination. And the more radical the new idea is, the more cautious one must be.

But in the end, whichever way you turn it, one has to have scientific guts. ;--)

Issam,

I want to make one general comment regarding the 'wholesale' and non-constructive arguments like the one you quoted. (In this particular case, the author actually uses it to argue for the God-creator.) Although, as you can see from my answers, I'm somewhat sympathetic to similar criticisms, such arguments (by themselves) from the scientific point of view, are not very useful or helpful. Why?

First, they have appeared periodically during the last century and a half. But mainly my reason is related to the present unprecedented situation in science, where on the one hand, the scientific pressures are mounting from all the sides, but on the other hand, there are hardly any serious concrete proposal for the needed radical reconstruction of science. So such 'wholesale' criticisms, quite naturally, only agitate (already 'agitated') scientists without suggesting them any new pathways.

Of course, IMO, our main psychological problem (in science) is that we have not realized the unprecedented nature, or the depth, of the present scientific crisis and are looking for the usual incremental ways out of it.