Good point. I guess it isn’t that easy to pin down the definition of a law, is it?
Well, the vast majority anyway; I had one science prof who had a PhD in astronomy/physics and one in philosophy – but his colleagues in the school of science at the university regarded that as being very eccentric.
Reminds me of a comment I saw in response to some YECer talking about the verse that says God spread out the heavens like a tent; a guy said something to the effect that it’s an awfully wrinkled fabric (and someone else commented that ‘wrinkles’ can be quite beautiful and aren’t necessarily flaws).
I.e. science cannot judge whether it is dealing with things as they are in themselves.
Yep – it’s the difference between God as a “thing-maker” and God as a “dancer”; one moves Him a step away from Creation and the other has Him in constant intimate relationship with it. To me that goes back to the Trinity where it is the nature of God to be in intimate relationship.
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I think this is complete silliness. Scientists make excellent philosophers. Makes me wonder how Vinnie is measuring “good” philosopher – could it be how much they limit themselves to tradition? By my measure that is a terrible philosopher. And then I think of Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers and he was also an excellent scientist (often called the first scientist in history). At least he had down the observation aspect of science. The idea of testing your conclusions came later, particularly with Alhazen 1021 and Galileo 1564–1642.
I would agree training as a scientist does not substitute for training as a philosopher. But I think training as a scientist certainly does not give one disadvantages for doing philosophy, quite the contrary.
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You’re misunderstanding.
We would need to put a star in a laboratory if we want to call it a law and laboratory conformation is required to call it a law.
But that’s not the case.
Most scientists and science enthusiasts don’t seem to care. They’re more interested in the outcome than in what you call the outcome.
It’s not much of a miracle if it doesn’t.
Cf juniper bushes.
Citation needed.
Where did Heisenberg say this?
It seems unlikely.
Added: Found it. Unexpected. Not sure it helped though.
Being dependent on something for existence does not imply being continually dependent on it forever.
This post is dependent on me for its existence, but it won’t stop existing if I ignore it after posting.
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Frankly to me it sounds like the difference between an actual creation and a dream… and thus the difference between theism and pan(en)theism.
One needs a lot of blessings / help if one believes the bible says “if you eat from that tree I am going to kill you” or that God uses unnatural means to achieve his ends as if his nature is not good enough for ones demands. Its an attitude problem towards God.
but isn’t it still continually dependent on you unless you deny it?
And as I have discussed in the past, we distinguish between linear and hierarchical series. Once the first domino is knocked over its cause can stop existing. The rest will fall. This is not true for the cup of coffee being held up by the table (which is an actualized potential). This is the A-T version of the cosmological argument which is much more robust than versions like Craig’s KCA. I’m pretty sure you were in those topics at least incorrectly challenging that the divine attributes were left behind or that they don’t apply to the Biblical God. Your post may be true of horizontal causation but not for vertical causation.
I’m not sure why you would find connecting electron behavior to Aristotelian philosophical terms unexpected. One has to deal with the problem of excluded middle and non-contradiction. Electrons at slits look like act potency and quantum entanglement challenges microphysical reductionism. It seems parts can behave per the holistic constraints of a larger system which is essentially the idea of substantial form. It would go too far to say QM provides empirical support for hylomorphism but it does provide a very compelling fit.
It is better to distinguish between horizontal and vertical causation.
They put it simply:
This is where vertical cosmological arguments come in. They don’t ask what started the universe – they ask what sustains it. Aquinas’ point is that a chain of causes in time wouldn’t be enough to explain why anything exists right now. The continued operation of the laws of physics, the persistence of matter, and the stability of reality itself all seem to depend on something deeper. An eternal universe still needs a sustaining cause – something that explains why causes keep causing.
Vinnie
Absolutely not. For obvious counter-examples, there are posts on BioLogos from people who’ve forgotten them, posts on BioLogos from people who deny saying any such thing, and posts on BioLogos from people who are deceased.
The post would continue to exist regardless of whether I affirm or deny it, or even whether I continue to exist.
That post is dependent on me for it’s initial existence, but not it’s continued existence.
This should be obvious. I don’t know why it isn’t.
But what you call vertical causation does not therefore lead to the conclusion that the first cause or first mover still exists. It is useless for the intended purpose.
Because it meant considering philosophy that was more than 7 centuries old, and ignoring more recent work by e.g. Newton.
Perhaps they should ask whether anything sustains it before asking what sustains it. Newton’s 1st law of motion suggests nothing may be required.
An acquaintance of mine, Johny Jagganath, in Bangalore, India, has asked me to post the following observation here and to give him credit for it:
“A mass in a moving train is heavier for an embankment observer but there is no way to falsify it or prove it. Falsifiability violated in relativity.”
I am posting it as Johny’s claim, not my own. But it does raise a philosophy-of-science question that seems appropriate to this thread: If a scientific claim is in principle neither provable nor falsifiable, on what grounds can it properly be asserted to be true?
You could suspend the mass from a mailbag drop-off crane, and see how heavy it was when it hit the observer on the embankment…
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i wonder whether any mechanism used to measure the mass in motion would itself be affected by that motion? When you are travelling on a train you do not feel heavier or need to use more effort to lift a cup. It is the equivalent of a microcosm within the confines of the train otherwise a fly could not fly against the direction the train was going
I am not trying to be smart or dumb, just asking
Richard
A mass in free fall is in a local inertial frame which has the same physics as not moving at all. Something sitting on the surface of the earth is not in an inertial frame (and so dropped objects fall down). For an example of an inertial frame consider free fall environment of the international space station. So it is possible a device designed for the ground may not work the same in an inertial frame. But Roy doesn’t actually mention any measuring device (let alone where it is placed), instead he implies the mass (or weight) is measured by the impact, which is correct.
Then his suggestion is false because the statement said that the sack was in the train not outside it or flung from it.
Richard
An analogy from Newton’s first law will not help due to metaphysical issues but I think it’s relevant to the current discussion of laws and such in this topic to note that both the first law and the law of the conservation of energy are only locally true approximations of reality. Really really good ones. A ball thrown in space will actually stop. A thrown ball’s momentum (peculiar velocity) will eventually become zero through space (with respect to its surroundings) but from our perspective it will actually speed up and recede at velocities past the speed of light as it moves with space.
But even if we imagined a static universe where a ball moved forever this is irrelevant to the vertical cosmological argument. And of course we could simply say “a ball continues moving for some duration without a continual mover” once it’s thrown in space. So we should probably look at this version.
Without beating around the bush, this is a category error. If an object is simply maintaining a state of uniform local motion, there is no new potential being actualized regarding its velocity. We should not confuse the motion of something (its state) with its being. Position itself is also a relational concept.
A ball moving in space is a composite that exists at any instant and must be an actualized potential on that front. Those atoms constituting the ball could be other than they are–meaning not a ball. The constant motion of the ball is also occurring over time which puts us in a linear type series. Hierarchical or vertical causation is based on a snapshot view. Rather your argument should be that since the ball is moving without a mover it didn’t need a thrower to throw it in the first place, which is silly. In the vertical case, the continued existence of the ball thrown in space must be actualized by another and that other must exist to do the actualizing. You have to actually follow the arguments theists use if you want to analyze them.
It is obvious. A father generates a son. The father can die while the son continues to live. A cause only needs to exist at the moment of generation in a linear series.
Vinnie
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