pragmatist

Laws as Rules We speak casually of the laws of nature determining the distribution of matter and energy, or governing the behavior of physical objects. Implicit in this rhetoric is a metaphysical picture: the laws are rules that constrain the temporal evolution of stuff in the universe. In some important sense, the laws are prior to the distribution of stuff. The physicist Paul Davies expresses this idea with a bit more flair: "[W]e have this image of really existing laws of physics ensconced in a transcendent aerie, lording it over lowly matter." The origins of this conception can be traced back to the beginnings of the scientific revolution, when Descartes and Newton established the discovery of laws as the central aim of physical inquiry. In a scientific culture immersed in theism, it was unproblematic, even natural, to think of physical laws as rules. They are rules laid down by God that drive the development of the universe in accord with His divine plan. Does this prescriptive conception of law make sense in a secular context? Perhaps if we replace the divine creator of traditional religion with a more naturalist-friendly lawgiver, such as an ur-simulator. But what if there is no intentional agent at the root of it all? Ordinarily, when I think of a physical system as constrained by some rule, it is not the rule itself doing the constraining. The rule is just a piece of language; it is an expression of a constraint that is actually enforced by interaction with some other physical system -- a programmer, say, or a physical barrier, or a police force. In the sort of picture Davies presents, however, it is the rules themselves that enforce the constraint. The laws lord it over lowly matter. So on this view, the fact that all electrons repel one another is explained by the existence of some external entity, not an ordinary physical entity but a law of nature, that somehow forces electrons to repel one another, and this isn't just short-hand for God or the simula