The physicist Lee Smolin thinks that physics, its laws, and constants evolve: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/troublemaker-lee-smolin-says-physics-8211-and-its-laws-8211-must-evolve/ — Fooloso4

Smolin has a theory of cosmological natural selection in which the laws or constants may change when a new universe is born from a black hole in the preceding universe. So if I understand him right, he doesn't propose that such a change has happened in our universe since it was born.

These laws were different immediately at and immediately after the Big Bang. They also have problems inside black holes. And who knows if they apply to all of the universe? — Manuel

But apparently the known laws of physics (regularities) have been stable for billions of years.

Sure, they're pretty stable all right.

Still, there are exceptions: the Big Bang and Black Holes. Things break down at these levels. I'm thinking that when James Webb Space Telescope gets going - hopefully it will be in space this year - we might find considerable surprises where such laws break down.

I have nothing against these laws at all, but I like Art Hobson's idea of thinking about these in terms of "habits" or tendencies. Not a big deal though, it's still impressive.

But apparently the known laws of physics (regularities) have been stable for billions of years. — litewave

Isn't that just the currently contingent theory, subject to revision in next week's Physical Review Letters? You have no actual evidence for such a proposition. It's an idea based on a mathematical model in a highly speculative area. It's a lot different than noticing that bowling balls fall down, isn't it? If these "known laws" -- which have become known only in the last few decades -- are changing in subtle ways, we'd be the last to know about it. Not so?

Later physical theories consist of better, more comprehensive, less ad hoc explanations than earlier physical theories. From this comes more precise predictions — 180 Proof

Right. But apparently the regularities of the world have not changed much, if at all. Scientists just found more accurate descriptions of them.

Still, there are exceptions: the Big Bang and Black Holes. Things break down at these levels. — Manuel

We don't know what is going on in these special cases but outside of them the regularities seem stable.

Isn't that just the currently contingent theory, subject to revision in next week's Physical Review Letters? — fishfry

I guess physicists have a lot of evidence that points to the stability of the known laws?

As far as we know the "constants" are constant (our physics breaks down at various edge cases already mentioned), but I agree insofar as better explanations, not merely more precise descriptions, have been found.

As far as we know the "constants" are constant (our physics breaks down at various edge cases already mentioned), but I agree insofar as better explanations, not merely more precise descriptions, have been found. — 180 Proof

In other words, better general descriptions from which more detailed descriptions can be derived. This is possible when there is an even more general/universal regularity than the ones we knew before.

I guess physicists have a lot of evidence that points to the stability of the known laws? — litewave

Several decades at least. Of course Ptolemy had evidence too. Isn't this just Hume's problem of induction? Old philosophical conundrum. Like the turkey said on Thanksgiving morning, "The farmer's been good to me every day this year ..."

And explanations consists of descriptions but a "better, general description" is not an explanation.

:up:

Smolin has a theory of cosmological natural selection in which the laws or constants may change when a new universe is born from a black hole in the preceding universe. So if I understand him right, he doesn't propose that such a change has happened in our universe since it was born. — litewave

I don't understand any of this or his work sufficiently well enough to say one way or the other, and if I did say it was one way or another it would probably not be for the right reason.

The laws according to Smolinare contingent not necessary and changeable in time. I don't know if he says one way or the other whether he things they are invariant in this universe.

Here is a short clip from an interview: https://www.closertotruth.com/interviews/3649

From another interview:

The conclusions that I come to, I think they're not subtle, they're easy to list, are first that—and I was opening with them before, the method of physics with fixed laws—which are given for all time, acting on fixed spaces of states which are given for all time is self-limiting. The picture of atoms with timeless properties moving around in a void according to timeless laws, this is self-limiting. It's the right thing to do when we're discussing small parts of the universe, but it breaks down when you apply it to the whole universe or when your chain of explanation gets too deep.

The third conclusion is that time therefore must be fundamental. Time must go all the way down. It must not be emergent, it must not be an approximate phenomenon, it must not be an illusion.

https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-think-about-nature

why do causal relations ("the constant conjunction between causes and effects", as Hume put it) persist in time? — litewave

Because our sciences substitute idealized abstractions for a more immediate and intricate experiencing of our world. The way we have carved up the world rigs the deck by forcing our experience into over-generalized channels such as objective causation and universal natural lawfulness. Then we mistake the peculiar constraints our models impose with the world itself.

Isn't this just Hume's problem of induction? — fishfry

Yes. I wonder why Solomonoff's solution to the problem of induction is not mentioned in that article.

An explanations consists of descriptions but a "better, general" description is not an explanation. — 180 Proof

I usually understand "explanation" as a derivation of something particular from something more general. Like, why does the apple fall down? Because of the law of gravity.

Because our sciences substitute idealized abstractions for a more immediate and intricate experiencing of our world. — Joshs

So if our sciences didn't do this, we would not experience the apple as falling down every time we drop it?

So if our sciences didn't do this, we would not experience the apple as falling down every time we drop it? — litewave

It’s not that the sciences are wrong, it’s that they operate with blinders on. So rather than just defining what is in front of me as this object moving in space according to a mathematical rule, we could embed this restrictive formulation within a much wider, richer and more interconnected experience that recognizes the contribution of my subjective schemes to what appears in front of me , and acknowledges the contribution of an intersubjectivity community of the construction of what we call ‘external’ reality.

It may be hard to see how this way of seeing improves physics , but it makes a profound difference to the social sciences and psychology, which have suffered under the rule of the methods of the hard sciences.

Ok, but the apple would still fall down every time we drop it, no? So the regularity would still exist even if we took our blinders off and the question would remain why the regularity persists.

the regularity would still exist even if we took our blinders off and the question would remain why the regularity persists. — litewave

The seemingly mathematically exact regularity would make way form a more complex pattern, What’s most valuable in the relation between the apple and gravity is that two previously unconnected phenomena were unified via an empirical explanation , not that a certain number (the gravitational constant ) resulted. In and of it self the constant, this ‘law of nature’ is not connected to anything. It is arbitrary. The most profound progress in science isn’t about arriving at arbitrary constants but showing the interconnectness of the world. As an example, a multiple universe hypothesis that makes the gravitational constant in this universe just one point in a spectrum of evolving universes, each with their own constants, changes the constant from an isolated and arbitrary number to part of an interconnected process of development. It could be that in a hundred years or so the physical laws have been replaced by a probabilistic , process -oriented physical model that puts unidirectional time at this core . We already are hints of this thinking with Lee Smolen and Ilya Prigogine.

So there are many kinds of models of regularities, and each has its drawbacks as well strengths. A strictly mathematical ‘lawfulness’ has as a drawback that everything that doesn’t fit into the model is rendered as chaos, randomness and chance. Prior to chaos theory, many physical behaviors were treated
that way ( cloud and smoke formations).

Solomonoff's solution to the problem of induction — litewave

Thanks for the reference, I'll take a look at that.

Physical laws cannot change by definition. If they did, they wouldn't be laws. But if the laws as we know as today, started to change, then we would realize that actually they are not laws, but only apparent laws subject to change according to real unmutable laws.

Now if the physical laws as we know, were allowed to change in a random non deterministic way, then the overall result is that there is no physical laws at all, because a law that is subject to change at any moment, cannot predict anything with certainty.

Now, in a universe in which there is no law at all, is highly improbable that stars and planets arise, let alone life.

When we find an example of physical laws changing then we look for a higher law which both the old and the new observations obey or we revise the old observations. This is a feature of law-making, law-devising or law-discovering rather than necessarily a feature of laws.

Example 1: sum of absolute value of two velocities is greater than or equal to either one of them, I. Newton. Oops, relativity. Correction: for velocities quite a bit less than c, law approximately applies.

Example 2: heavenly bodies move in circular orbits, circles being perfect. Sorry, they don't. Oh, ok then, old observations chucked, revise the law.

This is a feature of law-making, law-devising or law-discovering rather than necessarily a feature of laws. — Cuthbert

"Law" being another way to say "stable.". If we're in a stream where everything is moving at the same speed, everything around us will be stable. To realize that we're moving, we'd have to imagine a fixed vantage point. I think that's what you're saying? That to know that physical laws are changing, we'd have to have something fixed to compare the change to.

I mean we investigate the world with an a priori assumption that we will find regularities. When we don't find them, we assume not that the world is irregular but that we have not looked hard enough for regularity. So we go on looking. We think - 'it must be there'. Why must it be there? Perhaps it isn't. But that's not a good basis for investigation, even if it is (partly) true. So the world is regular because we are only able to acquire knowledge through regularities. So that is what we look at. If there are parts of the world that are irregular then we don't look further or we assume that we are not yet equipped to find the regularity that really exists.

Are there uncaused events? Possibly. We could not know the difference between an uncaused event and an event with a cause we were unable to detect.

Because if they weren't, nothing would exist.

Recently I've been thinking about why we live in a world with stable laws of physics — litewave

Balance

Two equally opposing forces in perfect eternal balance.

Nothingness and somethingness,

Light and dark,

Up and down,

Reality is a paradox.