Why the Laws of Nature are Not Laws

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Scientists have studied nature, and discovered many of its laws.  Or, have they?  Are the laws of nature really laws?

 

Laws are rules.  They are imposed by authority.  Rule-makers (by definition) make the rules.  But, whereas manmade rules can be violated (they often are, even by the folks who make them), laws of nature cannot be broken.  Attempts to do so (for example, by jumping off a tall cliff in defiance of the law of gravity) can result in serious injury or worse.

 

But, where does the law of gravity come from?  Did someone impose it?  Or, does it emanate from matter?  If so, why is the law of gravity able to be formulated into numbers that accurately predict the gravitational orbits (trajectories, and other behaviors) of any two objects?

 

The fact is, there is no law of gravity.

 

The laws of gravity do not accurately predict the behavior of three or more objects.  There is no formula for three dissimilar objects.  For four or more dissimilar objects not in a plane, the prediction becomes even more difficult.  (Computers can simulate the movements of millions of objects at a time, but they only approximate those movements.  After trillions of iterations, those errors become too pronounced to be useful as predictors.)

 

But, here is the catch.  Even for two bodies, there is no precise formula, because any object can be mathematically expressed as two objects, joined together.  This is why, in a vacuum, we can prove that a lighter object falls with the same acceleration as a heavier one.  The proof of that counter-intuitive truth is because, if a heavy object is said to fall faster than a light one, then attaching them together should make the light object slow the heavy one in its fall.  This introduces the paradox that, if a heavy object falls faster, an even heavier object falls more slowly.  (We are ignoring here factors of density.)

 

But, surely, you say, even if we cannot fine tune our formulas, there must be some underlying principle that we can call the law of gravity.  Of course.  But can we call it a law?

 

Here is a thought experiment.  Suppose someone notices a sequence of numbers, all positive integers, and wishes to find the underlying pattern.  At first, they seem entirely random.  Indeed, the numbers seem to follow the so-called laws of random numbers.  But, let’s see if they are random or not.  Here are the first 14 integers of the sequence:

 

1, 4, 1, 5. 9, 2, 6, 5, 3, 5, 8, 9, 7, 9

 

As you can quickly see, they are the first fourteen digits (after the decimal point) of the value of π (the Greek letter, pi).  Not everyone is as quick as you are, and so they might spend a very long time working out the underlying principle that determines each digit.  Some people might never discern the answer.

 

So, if someone were to be presented with this riddle, they might conclude that there is a “law of pi.”

 

The law of gravity has an underlying principle, but we cannot know what that principle is, no more so than we could discern π if we did not know what a circle is, or a diameter or circumference.

 

Likewise, all the laws of nature are expressions of an underlying reality, but we can never visualize the mystic circle, the eternal verities.  We see only the surface of reality, not its underlying truth.

 

 

I find that to be awesome.

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