Question Is it possible to determine whether the laws of Physics as they are currently perceived will last indefinitely? Is there anything to prevent the nature of the universe changing so much tomorrow that reality as we know it breaks down?

Accepted:
November 13, 2005

Comments

This question is at the heart of David Hume's great sceptical problem of induction. He argues that there is no possible reason for saying that the laws of physics won't change overnight, since to say this would be to make a prediction, and our method of prediction just presupposes that this won't happen. Put another way, it looks like you can't have evidence that the future will be like the past, because all your evidence is in the past, so to use that to show something about the future would require that you already know whether the future will be like the past.

There has been a great deal of productive work on the problem of induction, but nobody has come close to a full solution. If you want to get into this great issue, the best place to start is Hume's classic discussion in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, especially sections IV and V.

Kant thought he had a strong answer to Hume, but this answer requires embracing a strange metaphysical doctrine of transcendental idealism that few have found palatable. Kant' s best discussions of this occurs in his Critique of Pure Reason.

Suppose, however, that we reject "strange" answers like Kant's idealism, and suppose we also admit that we cannot prove that the laws of physics will remain unchanged in the future. There may still be strong reasons why we ought to believe that the laws of physics will be invariant, for example because this belief is necessary for motivating people to be moral or for motivating humans to conduct scientific investigations of the world.

There are strands of both strands of argumentation--the "strange" idealistic one and the "practical" one about human motivation--in Kant's discussion of the systematicity of nature and the regulative use of reason in the first introduction to the Critique of Judgment.

Question Is it possible to determine whether the laws of Physics as they are currently perceived will last indefinitely? Is there anything to prevent the nature of the universe changing so much tomorrow that reality as we know it breaks down? Accepted:November 13, 2005

Question Is it possible to determine whether the laws of Physics as they are currently perceived will last indefinitely? Is there anything to prevent the nature of the universe changing so much tomorrow that reality as we know it breaks down?

Accepted:
November 13, 2005