The absolute presuppositions listed in the OP are all metaphysical statements deeply contentious in nature, nothing to do with or provable by Science itself. — Corvus

Agreed—none of them are provable. But keep in mind that neither Burtt nor I claim the absolute presuppositions in the list are correct or the best ones to use. We only say they are the ones that have been used by physicists between about 1600 and 1905.

You need to explain, how the contentious metaphysical statements can be claimed as "absolute presuppositions" in science, and what benefits they would bring into science. — Corvus

I’ll say this again— for Collingwood metaphysics is the study of the absolute presuppositions that people actually used for particular purposes. What Burtt put in his book is something similar. It’s not what should be, it’s what he, a renowned, historian and philosopher of science, determined to be the case. If you want to disagree with him, that’s fine. I found his ideas interesting and convincing.

This point is not about understanding Collingwood's or your understanding of Collingwood. It is about a general rational inquiry on the issue. — Corvus

Let’s be clear. I wrote the OP. In it, I laid out my intended point for this discussion. If you want something different, have at it, but don’t tell me what I need to do.

But if we instead chose to look only for explanations in terms of pysical substance, then there's no need for such a demonstration. — Banno

Yes. Commitment to an ontology limits the kinds of questions we can ask.

And we can keep in mind that this is a methodological choice, so that if it happens that we come across something that does not appear to be physical substance, we can either reject the chosen method or we can look for further explanation. — Banno

This is the issue I’m struggling with. Is there a difference between a methodological and an ontological absolute presupposition. My intuition is telling me no, but I don’t think I have good arguments for that yet.

How does Collingwood get being "logically efficacious" without truth functions? Ans so, how can something that is neither truth nor false be logically efficacious? — Banno

I’ll take a swing at this, although I am on a bit of thin ice. If I am a physicalist, if I believe that all there is in the world is physical substances, that will guide me to look for answers in the physical world and to, perhaps, ignore subjective phenomena. We have found that approach to be pretty effective over the last few hundred years although we have also sometimes worried about its shortcomings.

Collingwood seems to be telling us how things were understood, not how they ought be understood. — Banno

Exactly.

There's an obvious and it seems to me insurmountable difficulty in saying that these presuppositions are neither true nor false. The result is that we cannot use them in our arguments.

So if Wayfarer or someone comes along and says that there is also in the universe a spirit of some sort, it will do no good to retort with "The universe consists entirely of physical substance" unless we add that it is true. — Banno

So let’s look at it from the other direction. Collingwood and I say an absolute presupposition doesn’t have to be true, it has to be logically efficacious. But it goes further than that. Anything that can be demonstrated empirically can’t be an absolute presupposition. For example, how do you go about demonstrating the universe is made up of only physical substances—matter and energy. Describe the experiment you would use. Do you think @Wayfarer would agree.

there is nothing intrinsic to the scientific method that other disciplines cannot also employ. — Tom Storm

Agreed. When I say “science” I think of searching for knowledge following rigorous standards— more rigorous than most of our everyday thinking. Science is important, so its rigor is important. There are certainly other things where such rigor is required, but that doesn’t mean science isn’t something special.

We sometimes fetishize science, which can lead to scientistic worldviews: the belief that only science can deliver truth to human beings. This is a foundational presupposition of old-school physicalists. — Tom Storm

Sure, but I’ll say it again. Just because some guys have screwed up and sold a highfalutin version, that doesn’t mean science isn’t something special.

I feel that Metaphysics must investigate the presuppositions for their truth, falsity, unknowns and borders with knowable, and then present them to Scientific inquiries as the preliminary foundation for their embarking the researches and experiments and coming to establishing Scientific laws and principles, and further hypothesis on the subject of their inquiries. — Corvus

Your understanding of metaphysics is different from Collingwood’s and mine. Or at least my understanding of Collingwood’s understanding.

For that reason, Metaphysics is the central and critical part of Science. Science must not accept what is listed as "absolute presuppositions" without critical analysis and investigation into them before finding out on their truth and validities. — Corvus

This is not how I see it.

the only way that we are able to understand such-and-such is if the universe were so-and-so; therefore the universe must be so-and-so. — Banno

Well put.

Which of the presuppositions are ontological, others are methodological? Can we even make such a distinction? — Banno

Good point. This is something I’ve wrestled with. I used to say epistemology should be considered part of metaphysics. I mostly stopped saying that because it just caused fruitless arguments, which isn’t to say it doesn’t still make sense to me.

We don't know for sure that "[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy" is true. Should we make such an unjustified presumption? — Banno

Collingwood and I say yes, although saying it’s unjustified might not make sense considering an absolute presupposition is neither true nor false. It just has what Collingwood causes “logical efficacy.” It helps us get stuff done.

There's potential to mistake methodological injunctions for ontological presumptions. We might at least be clear as to which is which. But might we not also do science if we followed these methodological rules: — Banno

As I noted just previously, I don’t have a final answer for this. I’m still working on it. What are your thoughts?

Then we would not be making presumptions as to how things are, but choosing what sort of explanations we prefer. But this treats them as voluntary, whereas Collingwood treats them as ineluctable within an epoch. — Banno

That’s not how I understand what Collingwood said. This is from his essay on metaphysics:

Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking.

Collingwood doesn’t want to specify what absolute presuppositions people in a particular period have to apply. He wants to figure out which ones they actually did use.

So, one “presupposition” underlying all science – still today - is that it is a way to accumulate knowledge – that science is a process, conducted according to the rigor of the scientific method –
— Questioner

Sure but interestingly there are different views on the scientific method. — Tom Storm

That’s not a presupposition, it’s a definition.

Susan Haack (a philsophy of science and epistemology stalwart) takes the position that there is no single, special “Scientific Method” that sharply distinguishes science from other forms of inquiry. In her paper Six Signs of Scientism Haack writes there is "no mode of inference or procedure of inquiry used by all and only scientists, and explaining the successes of the sciences." Essentially science shares its approaches to reasoning with everyday inquiry. — Tom Storm

I think that’s right, but it misses the point. In order to say you’re following the scientific method, you have to follow procedures that are rigorous, formal, documented, validated, and replicated. Could those same standards be applied to non-scientific thinking? Of course. Science isn’t the only way to know things or the only good way to know things, but when it’s done right, it is a good way to know things. Isn’t that good enough?

I think I agree with Colingwood on his concept of Metaphysics. Then there emerges questions. Is Metaphysics a part of Science? Or Is Science a part of Metaphysics? Or Metaphysics is Science? Or Science is Metaphysics? — Corvus

To oversimplify—metaphysics is the owner’s manual for science.

That is interesting. What is my understanding of Metaphysics? And what is yours? — Corvus

That's a very long story which I have discussed in many threads in the past. I don't want to go into it in detail here, but here's a brief summary from a previous thread:

R.G. Collingwood wrote that metaphysics is the study of absolute presuppositions. Absolute presuppositions are the unspoken, perhaps unconscious, assumptions that underpin how we understand reality. Collingwood wrote that absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false, — T Clark

If Science is based on the presuppositions which can be either true or false, then it is unable to provide useful knowledge. It then relegates to superstition or guess work, hence it needs help of Metaphysics? - hence the reason Kant wrote CPR. — Corvus

Your understanding of metaphysics is different from mine.

It was not clear if the OP was looking for “presuppositions” that only applied to pre-1900 physics — Questioner

I explicitly stated that was the case in the OP and elsewhere

Differences of degree within these qualitative wholes are quantitative. — Joshs

Here’s what Burtt has to say about primary and secondary characteristics.

Galileo, like Kepler, was inevitably led to the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities…Galileo makes the clear distinction between that in the world which is absolute, objective, immutable, and mathematical; and that which is relative, subjective, fluctuating, and sensible. The former is the realm of knowledge, divine and human; the latter is the realm of opinion and illusion.

The Copernican astronomy and the achievements of the two new sciences must break us of the natural assumption that sensed objects are the real or mathematical objects. They betray certain qualities, which, handled by mathematical rules, lead us to a knowledge of the true object, and these are the real or primary qualities, such as number, figure, magnitude, position, and motion, which cannot by any exertion of our powers be separated from bodies— qualities which also can be wholly expressed mathematically. The reality of the universe is geometrical; the only ultimate characteristics of nature are those in terms of which certain mathematical knowledge becomes possible.

All other qualities, and these are often far more prominent to the senses, are secondary, subordinate effects of the primary. Of the utmost moment was Galileo’s further assertion that these secondary qualities are subjective.

I tried to help — Questioner

Your comments haven’t been helpful or responsive.

Scientific inquiry presupposes a mind-independent, law-governed reality and the reliability of our cognitive and instrumental access to it, assumptions that science itself cannot justify without circularity. — Tom Storm

Yes. And nicely put.

You disagree with the generally accepted use of the words "phase" and 'form" in science? — Questioner

I disagree that it matters in this discussion.

It describes the state of physics knowledge in 1900. — Questioner

What does it have to do with the issues on the table? What does it change in the discussion going on? What does it add?

Metaphysics is not a science. — Questioner

Agreed.

"Numbers" related to science are expressed in units, and measure some quantitative property of the object under investigation. It is not correct to refer to "phases" of energy. When we are talking about energy, we talk about "the form of the energy." — Questioner

I disagree. Beyond that, you are talking about semantics not substance.

in late 1900 - Planck introduced the concept of "quanta" - that energy could be emitted in discrete packages

in 1905 - Einstein's Theory of Relativity merged space and time to spacetime - and measurements of them became relative to an observer's motion and gravity — Questioner

I picked 1905 because it is my understanding that Einstein’s papers in that year are considered the beginnings of both relativity and quantum mechanics. As I noted in the OP, I wanted to talk about the absolute presuppositions before those events.

So, in 1900, Newtonian physics still prevailed. Determinism was the prevailing belief. They lived in a deterministic universe, where the future behavior of systems could be predicted if their initial conditions were known with sufficient accuracy. Energy was viewed as a continuous wave-like phenomenon. Maxwell's electromagnetism provided a nearly complete description of the universe. And they held to the existence of a ubiquitous, rigid, massless medium they called “aether” – and light and electromagnetic waves propagated through it. — Questioner

How is that relevant to this discussion?

but science is not based on "suppositions." — Questioner

I disagree. If you believe science is not based on presuppositions, then you are one of those people who think there’s no value in metaphysics.

For something to have mathematical characteristics, it must have a qualitative identity which persists over time. — Joshs

Mathematically, an atom is a point. It has a location, a mass, a velocity, a charge, a spin. those are all numbers, no qualitative identity.

It’s not red, beautiful, or hairy.

Numeric iteration (differences in degree) implies sameness in kind. — Joshs

Sorry, I don’t know what this means.

"The real world in which man lives is a world of atoms, equipped with none but mathematical characteristics and moving accord — T Clark

I’ll put in this Burtt quote again—“The real world in which man lives is a world of atoms, equipped with none but mathematical characteristics and moving according to laws fully statable in mathematical form.” So, the world is made up of physical phenomena, but the characteristics of those phenomena are mathematical. Whatever the ding dong that means.

Science can only deal with what our senses reveal...with what is measurable and quantifiable. There are other less 'hard' areas of enquiry such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, ethology that require thinking in terms of purpose and reasons rather than or as well as mechanical causal models. So I think it depends on what you mean by "epistemology". — Janus

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re talking physics—CERN, LIGO, dark matter, string theory, superconductivity.

A scientist doesn't even need to think of what is being investigated as physical. They can simply "shut up and calculate" or they could think everything is ultimately mind and still do science perfectly as adequately as they do thinking everything is physical. — Janus

Maybe. I’m not sure. I’ve always thought epistemology should be considered part of metaphysics. They’re too intimately connected to be separate.

I can't see why one would need to be a metaphysical materialist in order to do science. Scince can only deal with what is given by the senses―that is its methodology. — Janus

Interesting. I’m not sure I understand how you can have a materialist epistemology but a non-materialist ontology. Can you give me an example of how that might work?

The question that jumps out at me is: are the mathematical laws themselves physical, and, if so, how? I don’t expect an answer to that, as there isn’t one, so far as I know. But it makes a point about an inherent contradiction in physicalism. — Wayfarer

I'm not arguing for physicalism but against the idea that it is inherently contradictory. It can be argued that what we think of as laws are simply the ways physical things behave on the macro level based on what is ultimately stochastic at the micro-physical level. — Janus

I’m not sure this is important, but I’m not sure it’s not either. Burt’s formulation of the mathematical absolute presupposition is different from mine. I wrote "Scientific laws are mathematical in nature." He wrote (with some fiddling by me) "The real world in which man lives is a world of atoms, equipped with none but mathematical characteristics and moving according to laws fully statable in mathematical form."

I bolded what seems like an important difference. The characteristics of the phenomena which make up the world are mathematical. The question then becomes whether the mathematical characteristics of the phenomena are physical. I'm not as sure of that as I was when we were discussing the laws of nature, which are not physical.

And Wayfarer can of course elucidate, but I took him to mean that a "law" isn't something made of physical items. — J

Agreed, see the previous exchange between @Wayfarer and me below.

Physical systems instantiate regularities;
scientific laws articulate those regularities in mathematical form. The laws themselves are not physical objects but ideal structures, grasped through intellectual acts of abstraction and measurement.
To treat laws as physical is to confuse what is described with the means of description.
— Wayfarer

I misunderstood what you meant by “are the mathematical laws themselves physical.” Now that you’ve explained, I agree with you. — T Clark

The problem with those presuppositions is that denying them, and asserting the opposites doesn't necessarily result in contradiction. — Corvus

I don’t understand why that would be a problem.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad — Maw

My favorite novel. I’ve given it to just about everybody on my gift list, some of them more than once.

Not to pull this back to reference magnetism, — J

This has been a very substantive discussion so far. I think the new approach we discussed in the previous thread gets the credit.

Physical systems instantiate regularities;
scientific laws articulate those regularities in mathematical form. The laws themselves are not physical objects but ideal structures, grasped through intellectual acts of abstraction and measurement.
To treat laws as physical is to confuse what is described with the means of description. — Wayfarer

I misunderstood what you meant by “are the mathematical laws themselves physical.” Now that you’ve explained, I agree with you.

That's too strong, I think. What we can know about natural laws are through certain mathematical equations, this only means that we understand the mathematical aspects of nature, not other aspects. It's not at all implausible to think there is more to nature than what our equations tell us. — Manuel

I absolutely agree, but I was writing my understanding of the absolute presuppositions Newton and all those other guys used. As I interpreted it, Burtt understood that similarly to the way I did.

[10] Something can not be created from nothing.
— T Clark

It would make no sense. Would it be impossible? I don't know. Perhaps we have a misleading picture of nothing. — Manuel

If I remember correctly, I took that from the critique of pure reason. Would it be impossible? Whether or not it would be, apparently Kant thought it would. Looking back from physics as we see it today, perhaps Kant’s understanding of nothing was limited.

Great thread by the way. — Manuel

Thanks. I’m having a good time.

Not to pull this back to reference magnetism, — J

Don't be reluctant. That discussion made a big impression on me.

the two approaches could be contrasted and understood without necessarily needing to employ the term "real" or "reality." "What does the the word 'reality' refer to?" is non-substantive. "Can we know anything apart from our own interpreted experiences?" is substantive. Or at least as substantive as such a highly abstract inquiry can be. — J

I generally agree with this. I talked about reality because that's the term @Tom Storm used and I think he used it appropriately. It's hard for me to avoid the language we discussed in the reference magnetism thread. I find myself going back and revising my text to eliminate non-essential language that might push the discussion in a non-substantive direction.

But it makes a point about an inherent contradiction in physicalism. — Wayfarer

It is, as you say, one of the main reasons to reject physicalism, at least as it's usually understood. — J

I don't understand why this would be true. Maybe I misunderstood what Wayfarer meant when he wrote "are the mathematical laws themselves physical."

I thought of you when I was writing the OP. These are issues we have talked about numerous times before.

The question that jumps out at me is: are the mathematical laws themselves physical, and, if so, how? — Wayfarer

Are you talking about something like Tegmark's mathematical universe? As I understand it, that's an example of an absolute presupposition. Pretty sure Tegmark disagrees. If I remember correctly, he thinks it's an empirical fact based on the so-called "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."

Another question is about your understanding of ‘formal and final causation’. — Wayfarer

I don't normally talk about these issues in terms of Aristotle's four causes. That's used here because that's how Burtt expressed it. I interpret it as the idea that God created the universe and all existence. Not sure that's right.

Did they really think there was nothing that couldn't eventually be understood? Or does it only mean 'partially understood' or 'sufficiently understood'? — noAxioms

Keeping in mind, I’ve set these up as the absolute presuppositions of classical physics—If it can’t be understood, there’s no point in studying it, so there’s no point in physics.

Pre-20th century, sure, but also post renaissance. — noAxioms

The way I’ve set up this issue, the absolute presuppositions I’ve identified represent the basis of physics between about 1600 and 1900–Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

Norton's dome — noAxioms

I’m not familiar with this concept. I looked it up briefly, but I’ll have to look at it more thoroughly later.

Was this never challenged? It being false is a nice retort to say Zeno's attempts to drive a continuous universe to absurdity. — noAxioms

I’m sure there were people who didn’t agree with it, but as I noted, absolute presuppositions are neither true nor false. They have or don’t have what Collingwood called “logical efficacy” and what I call “usefulness.”

Your 11-14 seem to require discarding some of the previous presumptions. Less so with 15-19, but still not compatible with 1-10. — noAxioms

As I noted, I put together the list with items one through 10 in a discussion here on the forum about four years ago. Items 11 through 14 represent my interpretation of EA Burtt’s understanding of the absolute presuppositions of scholastic science before 1600. Items 15 through 19 represent my interpretation of his understanding of the absolute presuppositions developed in the 1600s by Newton and others. All in alI I thought they matched reasonably well, although certainly not perfectly.

The amount of energy is frame dependent. Matter wasn't back then. Nobody suggested that the two were interchangeable. — noAxioms

Good point. An anachronism.

Dark matter cannot be seen or measured, but it affects stuff that can be measured. — noAxioms

Dark matter can be seen indirectly. That’s also true of much of what physics deals with today. Electrons also cannot be seen or measured directly.

But it's not objective. It's subjective — noAxioms

You have provided your own understanding, your own absolute presupposition. As I’ve noted absolute presuppositions are not true or false, they either have logical efficacy or they don’t. That depends on context.

I don’t know about the others, but this one has often interested me. This statement seems to capture what I see as the foundational metaphysical assumption of science: that there is an objective reality which humans can understand. — Tom Storm

I have taken the position in the past that objective reality is an absolute presupposition of a materialist ontology. I think that is reflected in the absolute presuppositions of physics I have included.

do these patterns tell us about reality itself, or only about the ways humans organize and interpret our experiences? — Tom Storm

This is a really good way of putting it. I think the two choices you’ve given us above are absolute presuppositions of two different metaphysical approaches which have different understandings of what “reality” means. Either can be useful, depending on the context. We probably need the first in order to do physics. I’m not exactly sure about that.

That doesn't make it a presupposition though. That just makes it a practical reality. It's a practical reality that we have access to physical objects, can smash them into each other, and so it's a practical reality that if we want to predict the future of the world we live in, we can only do so using the stuff we have access to. — flannel jesus

An absolute presupposition is an assumption. You can't really establish whether it's true or false empirically. It's a way of looking at things that allows a particular way of thinking to proceed. In order to do physics as it was done in 1900, you need to observe and measure things. You can't do physics on things you can't see or measure. To overstate the case, in order to do physics you have to be a materialist. So...Yes, that does make it an absolute presupposition.

To say physics presupposes all their is is matter, is like saying botany presupposes that all there are are plants. I mean ffs Newton himself wasn't a materialist. — flannel jesus

To be nitpicky and clear, it doesn't say all there is is matter, it says all there is is matter and energy. This represents physicalism, materialism. That's all physics as it is generally formulated can study. I'm not saying this is something good. Many people think this kind of physics is limited and misleading.

In like manner, plants and related phenomena are all botany can study.

That's not a support of the presupposition claim you made, — flannel jesus

Yes, I think it is. As I wrote previously for the presupposition of physicality, "In order for science to be useful, you have to be able to abstract a general feature of behavior." In 1900, at the broadest scale, that was expressed as physical laws of nature.

whatever "law" may ontological mean, but you need not pressuppose EVERYTHING is lawful. — flannel jesus

As I noted, you need to presuppose everything you want to study or explain can be expressed by abstracting general features of reality. One way of doing that is by postulating laws of nature.

You'd have to define "law" first. — flannel jesus

Here's what I wrote previously.

All a principle or law is is a generalization of a regularity in the results of observations and measurements. In order for science to be useful, you have to be able to abstract a general feature of behavior. Otherwise, all you can do is talk about specific instances of phenomena. Again--It's something you can't do physics without. — T Clark

In order to call something a law of nature, it would have to represent a generalization at the highest level of abstraction.

Okay, well this one's too weak to even argue about then. Not a presupposition of science, apparently merely a common belief of scientists. — flannel jesus

No. It's a presupposition physicists have to make in order to study the physical world in a way that can be called science as it is currently understood.

I actually think that's the most important thing here - for you to define exactly what you mean when you call this things presuppositions of science, or physics, or newtonian physics or whatever the boundaries of this conversation are. To me, it means "someone cannot participate in the social endeavour we call Physics without assuming these things to be literally true". — flannel jesus

As indicated previously, "absolute presuppositions are the unspoken, perhaps unconscious, assumptions that underpin how we understand reality." This is what R.G. Collingwood says about them--"[An absolute presupposition] is a thing we take for granted in [our thinking]. We don’t question it. We don’t try to verify it. It isn’t a thing anybody has discovered, like microbes or the circulation of the blood. It is a thing we just take for granted."

Do you have to assume all that crap is literally true to notice and try to figure out these patterns? — flannel jesus

I recognize you don't agree with my position, which is fine, but if you're not going to take it seriously--and recognize I take it seriously--let's end this discussion now.

I just thought maybe you'd want to get a correct understanding of the scientific views you're discussing. — frank

You think I’m wrong. I think I’m right. I think I’m probably as good as judge of this as you are. I’m comfortable with my understanding.

I think if you look into it further, you'll discover that I'm right. Energy is a scalar number that measures the capacity of a system to do work. There's an awesome Spacetime video in which Dr O'Dowd explains it really well. I've posted that video three times so far on this forum. But you can also discover the information elsewhere. :grin: — frank

I wrote a bunch of stuff about different principles in the OP. This particular one is just a small portion of what I’m interested in here and not a central one. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on all the presuppositions I identified.

Energy is a number, not a substance. — frank

The amount of energy is a number, but so is the amount of matter. Energy and matter are just two phases of the same substance like ice, steam, and water.

Before I get started, I put an edit in the OP to clarify my thoughts. As I noted there, the positions I describe are intended to apply to physics as opposed to all of science and specifically to classical physics before the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics in 1905.

I don't think most of these are presuppositions of science. — flannel jesus

I don't agree.

1. I mean, science is an attempt to understand the universe by humans, so... yeah this one's a presupposition, but a rather agreeable, obvious one. The alternative to trying to understand the universe is not trying, and not trying doesn't seem to have many returns on (non)investment, so we might as well try. — flannel jesus

Agreed.

2. Nope, not a presupposition of science in the slightest. Science has access to matter, and thus that naturally makes it easier to find out things about matter than ... things we don't have access to. It's not a presupposition of science, our focus on the physical is just an inevitable consequence of what it means to do science. — flannel jesus

And that's the whole point of an absolute presupposition. The question isn't whether it's true or false, it's whether it's necessary in order for the enterprise of physics to proceed. You couldn't do physics as it existed in 1900 without something you can measure, i.e. physical substances.

3...just because science tries to find principles and laws to describe behavior doesn't necessarily mean that in order to do science, one must presuppose substances all behave consistently in according with those principles and laws. — flannel jesus

All a principle or law is is a generalization of a regularity in the results of observations and measurements. In order for science to be useful, you have to be able to abstract a general feature of behavior. Otherwise, all you can do is talk about specific instances of phenomena. Again--It's something you can't do physics without.

4...It happens to be the case that a lot of what we know about matter is describable mathematically - the fact that that's the case doesn't require a presupposition that it's a universal truth. I don't think this one counts. — flannel jesus

I didn't say it was a universal truth or true at all, only that you have to assume, act as if, it's true in order to do physics as it was done in 1900.

5...Most scientists presuppose this, I think, but I again don't think it's a necessary presupposition. Someone could easily conduct science without that presupposition, right? Like one can imagine certain things we call laws fluctuating over time. — flannel jesus

I think you've answered your own point. It's not necessary I guess, but physicists do presuppose it. It's the background against which any variation from expected results is measured. You claim physics can be conducted without this presupposition. Can you give me an example of how that would work?

6...many scientists I'm sure are very questioning of the very concept of causality itself. — flannel jesus

That's true. I question the value of the concept of causality myself. But mainstream physics did not question it prior to 1900.

7...Not a presupposition. This is a belief that's a consequence of experience and observation. If human scientists lived in a different universe where we experienced and observed very different things, we could easily have a science that has substances which are destructable. Come to think of it... don't matter and antimatter destroy each other? I give this one a 0/10, big fat NO on that being a presupposition. — flannel jesus

The laws of conservation of matter and conservation of energy were fundamental laws of physics in 1900. Since then, we've learned energy and matter are equivalent. Now we have the law of conservation of matter and energy. Physicists didn't know about anti-matter until the late 1920s.

8...Not a presupposition. Not even a universal belief among scientists. — flannel jesus

I included this because the presupposition that the universe is continuous was included by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. An absolute presupposition doesn't have to be a universal belief.

9...Definitely a big fat no on this one. Separate? Have you literally never heard of spacetime? — flannel jesus

No one had heard of spacetime in 1900.

10...Not a presupposition. At best, it's a similar situation to 7 - a belief that arose from experience and observation. Different observations could have yielded a different scientific belief. — flannel jesus

The position that physical substances can not be created from nothing is just the flip side of the laws of conservation of matter and conservation of energy.

this about presuppositions of science, or of scientists? I'm not sure the former makes any sense. The latter is an empirical question only answerable by a survey, no? — bert1

Yes, science, not scientists. And, as I noted in an edit for clarification, I mean physics in particular. And yes, a discussion of the presuppositions of physics does make sense.

Energy isn't a substance. It's a physical construct, which means it comes from the analysis of an event. — frank

E = mc^2