Comment on Smart non-reductionists, philosophical vs. engineering mindsets, and religion

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 07:54:57 GMT

This is the core of his argument, and it is entirely unfounded.

It's not founded, but neither is it explicitly contradicted.

While nothing in chemistry is known to contradict the laws of physics, we have yet to conclusively show that chemistry can indeed be entirely explained by the laws of physics. It is still possible that there are laws of chemistry that cannot be derived from a complete set of laws of physics correctly and fully applied.

Occam's razor favors the idea that behaviors in chemistry we cannot currently predict directly from physics are results of our not-yet-complete understanding of physics and/or our lack of sufficient computational resources applied to the question. Postulating an additional "level" of rules that can't be derived from physics is not currently necessary to explain features of chemistry tat are not yet reduced to physics. But that's not the same as saying another level is ruled out.

Discuss