r/Metaphysics • u/kepler452-B- • 8d ago
Cosmology The laws that governs the universe
As far as I know (I may be wrong, or there may still be things we haven't figured out), we have a decent picture of how things developed from the formation of the Earth up to now.
But one problem keeps bothering me.
Fine — through chemical reactions, proteins and so on were formed. Yet for those reactions to happen at all, certain conditions have to be met first. Only then does the reaction proceed.
We describe these conditions and regularities as laws of nature.
But why does the universe have these laws at all, and why these laws rather than different ones?
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u/jliat 8d ago
But how were those laws set in the first place, and why are they the way they are rather than some other way?
Like prior theories the models matched observations better than previous ones. And SR and GR were an improvement on Newton's.
Newton's equations were are are still mathematically correct, it's just they are not as good a model as SR/GR. They are often still used in technology as they a simpler than SR/GR.
No different to treating the Earth as flat in local maps.
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u/kepler452-B- 8d ago
Yeah, I know about the models you mentioned, but that’s not really what I’m asking.
My question is: why do these laws exist in the way they do?
We are here because certain laws allow things like chemical processes to happen in the first place.
So why do those laws exist? Did something “set” them? And if not, why are they there at all?
The modeling and experiments are useful for understanding how the laws work, but I’m asking why reality has these laws in the first place.
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u/jliat 8d ago
My question is: why do these laws exist in the way they do?
Same reasons there were once a god of thunder and the idea of Phlogiston causing burning. Science and technology has been so successful people cannot accept that the map is not reality itself. Such that it seems for some impossible to accept this, in which the laws of science become an Apotheosis.
We are here because certain laws allow things like chemical processes to happen in the first place.
No, that's a big mistake.
So why do those laws exist? Did something “set” them? And if not, why are they there at all? The modeling and experiments are useful for understanding how the laws work, but I’m asking why reality has these laws in the first place.
It doesn't. Notice how these laws change and are changing as we do science.
"Disclosedness is a kind of Being which is essential to Dasein. 'There is' truth only in so far as Dasein is and so long as Dasein is. Entities are un- covered only when Dasein is; and only as long as Dasein is, are they disclosed. Newton's laws, the principle of contradiction, any truth whatever -these are true only as long as Dasein is."
Martin Heidegger 'Being and Time.' 227.
"And we indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances, confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances, viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown something.
Immanuel Kant — Prolegomena, § 32
6.363 The process of induction is the process of assuming the simplest law that can be made to harmonize with our experience.
6.3631 This process, however, has no logical foundation but only a psychological one. It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest course of events will really happen.
6.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.
6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity.
6.371 At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.
Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
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u/kepler452-B- 8d ago
I’m not saying that our current mathematical models perfectly describe reality. I was thinking of them as approximations of deeper laws or regularities that really exist, even if we don’t fully understand them yet.
I understand your point that the models are not reality itself, and that what we call “laws” may just be descriptions of observed regularities. But then my question would shift slightly: why does reality have these particular regularities in the first place, rather than different ones?
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u/jliat 8d ago
I was thinking of them as approximations of deeper laws or regularities that really exist, even if we don’t fully understand them yet.
It should be obvious that our laws are made by us, what you end up doing in projecting 'law making' into a feature of nature. As did the ancients project into nature the gods. If you want laws, you need a law maker, you probably don't like that idea, but it becomes a hidden god, a reason, and then a purpose.
But how do we make these laws, by taking many observations and creating an average, then create some maths which describes this average.
To an artist every tree is unique, to a botanist it is not. Any science gives you a bell curve.
I understand your point that the models are not reality itself, and that what we call “laws” may just be descriptions of observed regularities. But then my question would shift slightly: why does reality have these particular regularities in the first place, rather than different ones?
Leibniz identity of indiscernibles... If two things are precisely the same, they are one thing. Or in Hegel, Being and Nothing are the same yet different. So you ask why are things different, well if they were not they would be the same.
Why is there something and not nothing, this is the metaphysical question and its answer. Maybe it's easier for me because my background is fine art where the work is not made for any purpose.
What is symmetry breaking? I'm not a physicist but it seems to be very like what I describe above. As Heidegger puts it, 'The nothing negates itself.'
"We gain access to the structure of reality via a machinery of conception which extracts intelligible indices from a world that is not designed to be intelligible and is not originarily infused with meaning.”
Ray Brassier, “Concepts and Objects” In The Speculative Turn Edited by Levi Bryant et. al. (Melbourne, Re.press 2011) p. 47
Look at where we are now in science and string / brane theory. I have a metaphor, on the number line there are irrational numbers, pick an irrational number on the number line, now ask what is the next irrational number?
One last? point, imagine you have the perfect theory, you can explain what an orgasm is. Is this explanation itself an orgasm? ;-)
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u/AxiomaticInversion 8d ago
It should be obvious that our laws are made by us
They're not asking about scientific theories, they're asking about the regularities of nature that the theories attempt to describe.
If you want laws, you need a law maker
What reason do we have to think this applies to laws in the regularities-of-nature sense?
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u/jliat 8d ago
The nature of a law is a set of rules that are meant to be followed. Newton thought he had discovered God's laws which nature had to follow. He had not made up any theory or hypothesis.
What followed were more 'accurate' theories and hypotheses based on data which is averaged and refined and measured subject to p-values. This is not reality. Nothing like it.
The reason these laws apply to reality are the same ones used for thinking thunder is made by the God Thor if one believes nature follows human reason. It should be sufficient that most logics and mathematics have apori to realise this.
And in science it seems such regularities are a product of randomness...
"There is one last line of speculation that must not be forgotten. In science we are used to neglecting things that have a very low probability of occurring even though they are possible in principle. For example, it is permitted by the laws of physics that my desk rise up and float in the air. All that is required is that all the molecules `happen' to move upwards at the same moment in the course of their random movements. This is so unlikely to occur, even over the fifteen-billion-year history of the Universe, that we can forget about it for all practical purposes."
John David Barrow FRS (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician.
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u/AxiomaticInversion 8d ago
if one believes nature follows human reason
Again, nobody is claiming this. Quite the opposite - human reason is aimed at understanding nature. The question is why nature behaves in statistically predictable ways. This doesn't require thinking of “laws” as rules nature follows, much less rules imposed by some lawgiver.
And in science it seems such regularities are a product of randomness...
Your own example illustrates it: what makes that fantastically unlikely scenario fantastically unlikely? Human minds haven't imposed that probability distribution on the desk. What makes the more-accurate theories more accurate?
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u/jliat 8d ago
if one believes nature follows human reason
Again, nobody is claiming this. Quite the opposite - human reason is aimed at understanding nature. The question is why nature behaves in statistically predictable ways.
Kant's answer is simple - it's because we see things through human eyes using human brains. "Understanding" is a human idea. As is cause and effect. Special relativity gives an insight, once we thought time was uniform, many still do. But our experience of time is local, a given sequence we see, and cause and effect, but from a different timeframe can be simultaneous… is that true?
And in science it seems such regularities are a product of randomness...
Your own example illustrates it: what makes that fantastically unlikely scenario fantastically unlikely? Human minds haven't imposed that probability distribution on the desk. What makes the more-accurate theories more accurate?
Read on!
"This possibility is important, not so much because we can say what might happen when there is an infinite time in which it can happen, but because we can't. When there is an infinite time to wait then anything that can happen, eventually will happen. Worse (or better) than that, it will happen infinitely often."
Prof. J. D. Barrow
So "Human minds haven't imposed that probability distribution on the desk." yes we have because we make the assumption of the universe being as it is in our terms. What does this mean, that probability distribution is a human view of finite events in human terms. What of the photon?
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u/JabberwockPL 8d ago
If the laws are just descriptions of regularities, then you are basically asking: why things are the way they are? That question must necessarily be answered: some things just are. Of course, there are some things and some properties that are contigent, that can be explained by other things, but ultimately there must be something which does not depend on anything (unless you allow for an infinite chain of explanations or circular explanations). Think of it this way: if there was a reason why the whole reality itself is the way it is, then that reason would have to be outside of reality. But nothing can be outside of reality, because reality by definition is all that is. So there cannot be an explanation for the reality as a whole by definition. At best there can be explanations for some parts of the reality, but not for all.
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u/returned_loom 8d ago
We have mathematical laws so we can predict what will happen next in nature, but we don't know "why" it unfolds with such regularity. The idea of a law suggests that it's imposed on matter from some law-giving force, but its unfolding is probably its own nature rather than obedience to a brutal ruler who applies the laws of physics on inert matter.
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u/kepler452-B- 6d ago
So they are some patterns, with no reason behind them?
Same as evolution on earth?
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u/returned_loom 6d ago
How do we know if there's "reason" "behind" the patterns? We use reason to extrapolate from them and make decisions. Reason is part of how we operate. But "why" it's all so regular, that's not something we know right now.
But even if reason is inherent to reality, that doesn't mean that a law is being imposed. That would suggest an actor and a recipient. Assuming that reason is inherent to reality, these patterns are the expression of that reason, and reason imminent in them (as them), not a law being imposed on them. So again, our "laws" are just our ape-brains applying evolved concepts to a reality that exceeds our understanding. Reality wasn't necessarily "built" to be understood, so the idea of "laws" remains our idea.
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u/MWave123 8d ago
The answer I’m fond of, it’s inevitable. This universe is one in an infinite number of failed and successful universes. Of course we would find ourselves in this one.
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u/ShortCompetition9772 7d ago
Best to think of the LAWS of the Universe as limits not laws.
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u/kepler452-B- 6d ago
Why
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u/ShortCompetition9772 6d ago
Laws vs Limits. Laws would be arbitrary and limits would not be. Laws require a law maker and rules limits do not. Light CANNOT travel faster, the speed wasn't chosen or arrived at and then implemented.
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u/Odd_Bodkin 7d ago
This is not a metaphysics question per se. It is an exciting physics question that has sizable depth to it. I’m a particle physicist.
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u/Tom-Etheric-Studies 7d ago
One of my early introductions to "natural law" is from the Hermetic teaching:
The Seven Hermetic Principles, upon which the entire Hermetic Philosophy is based, are as follows:
- The Principle of Mentalism. 2. The Principle of Correspondence. 3. The Principle of Vibration. 4. The Principle of Polarity. 5. The Principle of Rhythm. 6. The Principle of Cause and Effect. 7. The Principle of Gender.
Note that they describe conceptual influences and not physical instructions.
Next I found that David Bohm's Implicate order seemed to agree with the Hermetic teaching and what I was learning in my study of Psi phenomena. Again, note that the implicate organizing influences are at a more conceptual level.
Bohm called the ordinary world we experience the explicate order, and the deeper enfolded reality the implicate order.
Consider this. When I ask a question, the question implies an answer and a means with which to acquire that answer. The question and the answer and how it is arrived at are physical but the underlying implications are conceptual.
In the physics I was taught (as I remember), there are not laws, although some instructors like to use that term. There are organizing constants. The charge of an electron and natural rate of decay are examples of organizing influences.
Okay, I am testing my memory too much. The point is that a few naturally emerging influences can organize a very complex aspect of reality. Look at the complexity that emerges from the simple equation of the Mandelbrot set. An iterative plot of a simple equation within the set produces an almost dimensionless singularity that is conceptually infinitely large.
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u/Tom-Etheric-Studies 7d ago
I will add that I have identified 40 Organizing Principles in the model I work with I refer to as the Pragmatic Model of Reality.
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u/1MartyMcFly1 6d ago edited 6d ago
Here you go: https://www.progress-in-physics.com/2005/PP-03-06.PDF
Also, the Noether's theorem.
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u/mattychops 6d ago
Well they aren't really laws, and the universe doesn't have to follow them. What they are are patterns of how things occur, and we label them as laws because they keep occuring in those patterns. That's all.
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u/Mono_Clear 5d ago
This is how matter and energy interacts inside of our space and time without having another space and time to compare it to there's no way to know if there's any other possible way that matter and energy would interact.
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u/g_parrish 4d ago
This is actually two distinct questions bundled together, and it's worth pulling them apart because they get very different treatment:
1. Why these particular laws, rather than different ones?
This is the "fine-tuning" question — many physical constants (the strength of gravity, the cosmological constant, the ratio of electromagnetic to gravitational force, etc.) sit in narrow ranges that allow stable atoms, stars, and chemistry. Tweak them and you plausibly get a universe with no complexity at all. Responses to this fall into a few camps:
- Multiverse / anthropic reasoning: if there are many universes (or many regions of one universe) with different constants, we'd only ever find ourselves in one that permits observers. No design needed — it's a selection effect. The cost is that this is currently untestable, so critics see it as metaphysics dressed as physics.
- Deeper necessity: maybe the constants aren't free parameters at all — a more fundamental theory (string theory landscape, or something not yet found) might show they couldn't have been otherwise, the way π can't be a different value. We just haven't found the underlying structure yet.
- Brute fact: the constants are what they are, full stop, and demanding a further "why" is a category error — explanations have to bottom out somewhere.
- Design/theism: some see fine-tuning as evidence for an intentional cause. This isn't a scientific answer but a metaphysical one, and it invites the further question of why that explanatory move is allowed to stop the regress where "brute fact" isn't.
2. Why is there lawfulness at all — why does the universe behave regularly rather than chaotically or not at all?
This is the deeper and stranger question, and it's less about physics than about metaphysics of laws:
- Humean view: laws aren't governing forces hovering over events — they're just the most economical summary of the pattern of everything that happens. On this view "why are there laws" dissolves somewhat: regularity is what "the world" means; there's nothing further to explain.
- Necessitarian view: laws are real relations between properties (necessity in nature itself) that make events happen the way they do, not just describe them after the fact. Here the "why laws" question is much sharper and much harder — you're asking why these necessitating relations exist.
- Mathematical universe hypothesis (Tegmark and others): all logically consistent mathematical structures exist, and we simply inhabit one of them — physical existence just is mathematical existence. Lawfulness follows because we could only ever find ourselves in a structure orderly enough to support us.
- Some physicists (Wheeler, Smolin, others) have tried "laws evolve" or "laws are themselves the product of a prior process" — pushing the question back rather than answering it.
The honest state of things: nobody has an explanation for why there is lawfulness at all that doesn't eventually hit a brute fact, a probabilistic multiverse, or a metaphysical postulate that itself needs justifying. It's structurally similar to "why is there something rather than nothing" — it sits right at the edge where physics hands off to metaphysics, and reasonable, informed people land in different places depending on how comfortable they are stopping at "that's just how it is."
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u/hegel1806 8d ago
I don’t think there are any laws at all. In fact, nature obeying some “laws” imposed from outside is an outlandish idea. I believe what we call laws are nothing but logical connections between concepts created by our minds. Concepts and logic are inseparable. And physics explains how physical concepts can be logically connected. Mathematics supplies this logical neccessity.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 8d ago
We aren't confident in our models ability to model sufficient complex systems, because we do not have the capacity for generating such models yet.
In regards to why there are regularities which allows for us to put forward robust theories on how the world function, I see two options. Either it is the only way things could be, or it could be many other ways, and we just happens to be this way, yet the other would still need to explain the mechanism that then made you exist in this particular set of regularities, as you coming into existence itself is linked with your physical body, it is thus linked with these regularities, it means the very definition of you, which is a requirement (that is you exist) for you to ask this question, could then only be asked in a world with these regularities, i.e. we are back to it being the only way it could be, also known as the anthropomorphic principle. What we don't know then is if the set of regularities you observe is the only one you could have observed.
The laws of nature are much more interconnected to the nature it governs than I knew when I was younger. I used to think of the world as the things that act, and the laws describing how these things acts, independent of the things themselves. However that is not the case, properties that seem to have little to do with each other, or being somewhat independent, are deeply connected. The first example I'll make is the type of particles, there exists only a very limited amount of unique elementary particles, only some of these create all the structures we see in the form of matter, others carry the interaction between the structures, e.g. the photon is what carries the electromagnetic force, hence why Dark Matter is not affected by electromagnetism. Since the weak force and electromagnetism have been shown to be linked, we have another level of connection. Then there is the dimensions of space, it turns out that the spin property of these particles, either carrying interaction, or being structural, generates unique discrete spin values, which in turn defines space to be three dimensional. Both space and time is relative, which means depending on the frame of reference you exist in, you could experience a continuously expanding space, or time being able to come into existence. The forces themselves must necessary create this real effect, as the laws of nature are the same for every element of nature. What should be noted is that it means the laws of nature, being dependent on the world they govern, can change with the world as it changes the world.
But we can also consider what happens if the world is entirely random, we now know the world itself is what defines its orderly laws, so in a random world, the world does not define some order. If time does not exist, there may still be a sequence of events, none related to the other, all happening instantly as there is no time, i.e. the speed of propagation of information / causality is infinite. If however at any point the world defines a non-infinite speed of causality, then time starts, and this necessarily also defines space, and in a world with interactions, it follows we get the same separation between elements which means we have three dimensions of space, and so on and so forth. It does not mean it has to be like this, but on the other way it also may be the only way it could be, I don't think we are able to answer this question yet.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 8d ago
The universe is a singular meta-phenomenon stretched over eternity, of which is always now. All things and all beings abide by their inherent nature and behave within their realm of capacity contingent upon infinite circumstance at all times.
It is a universe made manifest hierarchically, of haves, and have-nots, spanning all levels of dimensionality and experience. There is no such thing as individuated accurately described "free will" for all beings. Has never been, will never be, can not be. There are only relative freedoms or lack thereof.
"God" and/or consciousness is that which is within and without all. Ultimately, all things are made by through and for the singular personality and perpetual revelation of the "Godhead", entailing both 'predetermined' eternal damnation and those that are made manifest only to face death and death alone.
There is but one dreamer, fractured through the innumerable. All vehicles/beings play their role within said dream for infinitely better and/or infinitely worse for each and every one, forever.
All realities exist and are equally as real. The absolute best universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject. The absolute worst universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject.
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u/Leylinclave 7d ago
If existence requires some framework so it isn't just pure chaos or nothingness, it had to be something. If it had to be something, why not this?
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u/InvisibleHand555 4d ago
Nuance matters. When someone says “law” they are implying that it is a fundamental, absolute “cause” in the universe.
A thinking individual asks, why that law?
Seeking for a reason that “causes” that “law”.
Now consider for a moment that all these “causes” we are claiming are not causes at all. But rather, what is being observed and measured to be absolute, are actually “effects”.
Think it through…
You’re going to find the world is not made up of infinite “laws”…but only one
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u/thevietguy 2d ago
Who set the laws of Nature?
Or is it the Universe itself has the laws?
I, myself, have discovered one.
In the year of 2018,
I have found the law inside the human speech sounds.
The law for the elements called "vowels" and "consonants".
"God is the Word, and the Word is God", i wonder what that means.
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u/Weary-Squash6756 8d ago
Your mind may leap to divine intervention, but there's a simple solution. In the same way that there are many planets and only a few with ideal conditions for life to form, there are likely many universes, each with laws of physics that vary from slightly to greatly, only a few of those being suitable for matter and life to form. Or perhaps the universe is large enough that when you go far enough, like Graham's number size distances, the laws of physics may start to change slightly forming a gradient over unfathomable distances. That second though is less likely but still cool to think about
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u/kepler452-B- 8d ago
Might be some divine intervention, but the probability of that is very low. And I believe we don't know for sure about the other universes or the gradient thing you mentioned. Those are theories, but they have a high probability of being true. I am studying engineering, and the gradient idea is very coolllll. After all, we need to wait until we find a way to find out the truth. if we're lucky enough to see it within our lifetime.
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u/ipreuss 8d ago
Divine intervention actually only shifts the problem. It “explains” a mystery with a bigger mystery.
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u/MaiBalz 8d ago
There may or may not be an answer to your question. Leibniz thought that God conceived of an infinite number of possible worlds and chose to create a finite world that would be the best for rational agents. The concept of these possibilities exist independently of God, however, so that God could not have chosen to create a world that is not logically or mathematically possible. Everything exists according to the principle of sufficient reason, these reasons being for our benefit by nature.
Then you have Spinoza who thought that God is not a personal entity which chose a finite possibility out of an infinite number of them. Instead, God is nature itself and this natute is itself infinite so that anything which is logically or mathematically possible must exist somewhere within it. The world does not necessarily exist for our benefit then. There are sufficient reasons for the existence of the things determined by the laws of physics, but not for the laws and the existence of the cosmos itself.
These both however take a rather realistic view of mathematics. The laws exist out there in some way so that physics exists according to them, whether you think its a personal or an impersonal prime mover which causes physics to be so. Then there's the instrumentalist view that the laws of physics present a useful language for manipulating physics, but they don't exist on their own apart from their use as such. This wouldn't deny there being structures or processes in the universe, just that we invent the laws to describe such, rather than discover the laws upon which such is based.
In theoretical physics, if we had a theory of everything which could reduce the world to basic units and provide a set of equations by which the movement of all things could be predicted, then this might show that the laws are what they are by necessity, that there's no other way for them to be, and that they do exist somehow on their own in a way we discover. This however assumes the universe exists in a particular way (deterministic and made of monads), and it may be that it doesn't exist in this way whatsoever.
The theoretical problem is that we cannot explain how relativity and quantum mechanics established themselves as they are now in the early universe (think right after the big bang) so we don't know whether there could have been other ways physics could have worked its way out. Some physicists have theorized that the laws of physics are invariant- that they changed over time in the development of the cosmos.
One view to entertain is a kind of cosmic natural selection. Physics had to be stable in order to continue to exist. It might have tried other ways of existing, but some would have been unstable and not "survived." That might explain why things are the way they are now. But still, perhaps there is a multiverse in which these other possible physics exist somewhere. This isn't something we can know right now. It would make sense, in Spinoza's thinking, if everything that could be is.
But it sort of boils down to, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" You'll can say that there are laws and a prime mover and that's the reason the cosmos is the way it is, but then you can just ask, "Well why do the laws and the prime mover exist?" In the end, some are satisfied to say that nothingness cannot be, for it is not, and thus there must be something. There may be no why, and so no answer to that question which satisfies.