1Z wrote:
>
> Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>
>>You would like this book by Vic Stenger:
>>
>>http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/nothing.html
>
>
> Yes, I am aaware of his work.
>
>
>>Vic defends the view that physical laws are based on point-of-view-invariance;
>>that is a constraint we place on what we call a law. As such, they are not
>>really laws constraining nature, they are symmetries that are an absence of
>>'law' (i.e. structure).
>
>
> Laws ultimately can only be a statement about how the world is (as
> opposed
> to how it is not). If they are statements about to the effect that the
> world
> is symmetrical, then the world is symmeerical not asymmetrical.
True. But it's not *the world* that is described by laws, it's certain aspects
of the world. In other words we pick out that which is point-of-view-invariant
(i.e. admits of intersubjective agreement) and codify those symmetries as laws.
We take the rest of "how the world is" as accidental breaking of symmmetries,
boundary conditions, randomness, etc.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Mon Mar 27 2006 - 17:42:27 PST