All things that exist have an identity – they are what they are, and are not what they are not.\u00a0 Although this sounds obvious, almost foolishly obvious, it is both the fundamental principle of metaphysics, and the fundamental principle of epistemology: A is A.\u00a0 Separate observers of a single thing may see different aspects of the thing, but the thing itself remains one existing thing, with a single identity.\u00a0 Consider a sticky lying in my yard.\u00a0 To my son it is a walking stick, to my daughter, a toy for the dog to fetch, to me, firewood.\u00a0 But all of these very different descriptions are derived from the properties of the stick as a stick.\u00a0 There is no fundamental disagreement between these descriptions – our knowledge of the stick does not conflict – nor do the properties that they rely upon (strength, size and weight, flammability) conflict.<\/p>\n
Every existing thing at any point in time has a set of properties.\u00a0 The relationships between existing things – how they interact, forces acting between them, relative positions, relative values of their common properties – are also constant and consistent\u00a0at any point in time, and will therefore change over time in only the way in which they shall change.\u00a0 There is no arbitrariness in how a system of interacting things evolves over time, no true randomness, no possibility of following different paths from a single starting condition.\u00a0 This fact is the law of cause and effect – every change in the state of a thing has a cause, and every set of identical causes creates a single effect.\u00a0 If a set of things is placed in the same condition with the same influences acting upon them at two different times all else being the same<\/em>, they will evolve identically both times.\u00a0 This principle of a thing – that it will act consistently when starting from the same condition and relation to other objects – is the nature of a thing<\/em>.\u00a0 All things have a nature.\u00a0 The issue of free will – an axiomatic property solely (to our knowledge) of human beings, we have discussed elsewhere.<\/p>\n The statement that things have a nature is equivalent to stating that things must follow natural laws<\/em>.\u00a0 The existence of these laws is based upon the very principle of cause and effect.\u00a0 To have effects, there must be causes, and as stated previously, the same effect will follow the same starting condition within a system of interacting things.\u00a0 The next key question is how does Man come to understand these natural laws?<\/p>\n Here is a very short outline of\u00a0Ayn Rand’s theory of epistemology.\u00a0 Man’s understanding of the Universe begins with observation of the identity of things, and grasping the commonality between individual things of the same category.\u00a0 Each category is then identified with a concept, in which the actual values – measurements – of the essential defining properties of the individuals within the category are removed, along with any non-essential variations between individuals.\u00a0 Interactions and relationships between existing things are similarly observed, and similarly abstracted into generalizations, again omitting the non-essential details and magnitudes of the interactions.\u00a0 The fundamental building blocks of human knowledge, then, are concepts and generalizations.\u00a0 These form the basis of a hierarchy of concepts and generalizations, as commonalities can be found between first level concepts (the classic example being tables, chairs, beds) to form a broader categorization and associated concept (furniture).\u00a0 Generalizations are structured into a similar hierarchy (animals are attracted to the center of the Earth, furniture is attracted to the center of the Earth,…, all physical objects close to Earth are attracted to the center of Earth, …, all physical objects are attracted to all other physical objects).<\/p>\n At the top of the hierarchy of generalizations related to the behavior of the physical world lie the Laws of Nature as understood by Man.\u00a0 Here we need to note several points.\u00a0 If (and only if) the process of generalization has been performed solely through the use of observation and the rigid application of logic, without introducing arbitrary preconditions and assumptions, Man’s understanding of the Laws of Nature is correct at every level of development, though not generally complete.\u00a0 For example, Newtonian mechanics is correct for phenomena not involving speeds approaching the speed of light, sizes approaching the size of an atom, or masses approaching the mass of the Sun.\u00a0 Einstein’s dynamics do not replace Newtonian physics, it includes it and expands upon the realm to which physics applies.\u00a0 Secondly, there is a distinction between the existence of natural laws, which is a metaphysical statement independent of the existence of a mind to comprehend them, and Man’s scientific theories describing these natural laws, which by definition rely upon the existence of human minds, and are obviously the product of human epistemology.<\/p>\n We are finally in a position to answer the question – Must the Universe be Simple?\u00a0 Simplicity is itself a human concept – there is no meaning to “simplicity” outside a human brain.\u00a0 Man’s approach to understanding the Universe is a continual process of exploration, observation, concept formation, generalization, theorizing and theory verification through more observation.\u00a0 Every step of this process necessarily involves simplification by omitting the measurements of the properties of the items being further abstracted.\u00a0 This simplification is required by the finite human brain in order to be able to comprehend and reason at an ever increasing level of abstraction.\u00a0 Man continually quests for higher and higher levels of comprehension of the Universe, creating the epistemological tools for this grand quest in the form of higher levels of abstract mathematics, which he then uses to further simplify the description of the Universe in the form of advanced physics.\u00a0 (At least, this is how science is supposed<\/em> to progress, though modern physics has attempted to find inappropriate short cuts to knowledge).<\/p>\n The answer, then, is that yes, the Universe must be simple.\u00a0 For simplicity is a purely human concept, and our understanding of the Universe is based upon a continual process of simplification.\u00a0 Another way to put this is that there is no meaning in a Universe that is incomprehensibly complicated, and to be comprehended, the Universe must be simple.\u00a0 One cannot make the assumption that the Universe is too complicated to be understood and progress at all toward its understanding, and yet we are surrounded by evidence indicating very clearly that we do have a very good comprehension of our Universe.\u00a0 Human technology could not exist otherwise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" All things that exist have an identity – they are what they are, and are not what they are not.\u00a0 Although this sounds obvious, almost foolishly obvious, it is both the fundamental principle of metaphysics, and the fundamental principle of epistemology: A is A.\u00a0 Separate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-epistemology","category-philosophy-of-science-philosophy-of-science","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nutmegfamilies.com\/aaronnturner\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}