Topics Science

Question Do the laws of science disprove the existence of ghosts? The universe adheres to strict physical laws and constants; as Stephen Hawking notes; these laws MUST be adhered to 100% of the time, or they wouldn't be laws. In science, a theory can be supported by thousands of separate pieces of separate empirical evidence but it only takes ONE piece of empirical evidence which contradicts a theory for that theory to be disproven; in which case the theory must be discarded or modified. The existence of ghosts is evidence which would contradict thousands of theories in science; in physics, biology and chemistry (Newton's laws of motion, Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy, etc. etc.) The immutability of the laws of science are verified by the products of man's understanding and manipulation of these laws; technology, transportation, medicine, etc. etc. These things form the bedrock of modern civilization. I know that in science it is said that nothing can be "disproven"; for example, we can't completely disprove the existence of "unicorns", because in some far region of the universe a unicorn-like creature may exist. But when it comes to the existence of beings whose existence would contradict the immutable laws of science, surely we can describe their existence as "disproven"?

Accepted:
September 23, 2010

Comments

Science is fallible. There is a long tradition of claiming phenomena to be "physically impossible" or "against the laws of nature" and then finding out that it is the laws that are the problem, or some underlying assumptions. E.g. in the 16th century, it was against the laws of nature to claim that Earth moves around the sun (it turned out that Aristotelian physics was wrong) and e.g. in the early 20th century continental drift was thought to be physically impossible (it turned out that continents do not move over the sea floors, but stick to them, making motion possible along with the formation of new ocean floor).

So I'm not a fan of saying that the laws of science disprove the existence of anything that we have independent evidence for. I think it is more scientific, in fact, to ask "what evidence do we have for the existence of ghosts"? and take it from there.