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First of all,
get
the fuck
over
yourself.
Ever since you opened this thread, you've openly assumed that nobody would be capable of corresponding with you intelligently. With all due respect, you are not okayplayer's resident philosopher. Despite the fact that this was never meant to be a philosophy board (something you never seem to figure out), there are multiple other okayactivist regulars who could school you on any subject of pure or applied philosophy. When it comes to the philosophy of science (yes the philosophy of it, not just the practice), I am on that list. If you disagree, and want to get into an old-fashioned measuring contest, you can post your publication list and I'll post mine.
Enough with the venting, from me at least.
Second, I'll point out that even if you had some understanding of how modern scientists and philosophers view "uniformity," you still would not be making a point.
Your original statement (that is, after you changed the subject from the question of whether reason implied morality) was that science is inherently theistic. You argued by chaining two arguments:
a.) "science requires a uniformity principle"
b.) "uniformity requires the assumption of the existence of 'God'"
I've been meaning to argue that the status of point (a.) has changed considerably since the enlightenment, and indeed was not as popular even then as it is generally assumed to be. I still plan to get to that, but I also want to emphasize the flaw in point (b.).
When you say "God," inVerse, we all know of whom you speak. You refer to the God of "Jesus on the cross," the conscious yet omnipotent God capable of altering the structure of reality to suit His divine whim. I hope it's clear to you that this kind of God is not at all necessary when assuming a uniformity of structure. Indeed, this picture of God sits in direct opposition to all of the standard views of uniformity, even that of the enlightenment.
As for point (a.), the issue of whether science is in some way founded on a principle of uniformity, I would argue that science isn't founded upon anything. Reductionism is common, though it is usually more a matter of practical simplification than of foundational principle. The assumption of some sense of objectivity is common, though the definition of objectivity, and its assumed extent, have changed considerably over the ages. Also, a certain assumption of relationship between local and global structures is usually floating around. In the enlightenment days, when people carried around enough hubris to hope for an axiomatic construction of scientific reason, people proposed this principle of uniformity as just such an axiom.
They were so terribly naive! (and we presumably still are today, just in new ways) Even the manner in which this "principle" was stated (and continues to be stated, in most circles), is fundamentally incompatible with the modern view of spacetime. The manner in which the principle exists, in a weaker form -- that the laws of physics are constant in space -- and a stronger form -- that they are also unchanging in time -- reflects the classical, Aristotelian view of spacetime: that it can be modelled as a tensor product of a Euclidean 3-manifold (space) and a 1-manifold with an independent geometric structure (time). Indeed the Aristotelian view supposed that spacetime, and any structure represented with respect to it, admitted a canonical decomposition into these two separate manifolds. This idea of space and time is not compatible with modern concepts, or even modern measurements. Einstein (100 years ago this year, by the way) extended enlightenment physics to the point where it became incompatible with what was often stated to be one of its fundamental principles! Should we have ignored special relativity, a model which was dramatically more accurate than any existing alternative, simply because it didn't fit into the narrow framework of naive philosophers? Well, we didn't, and we're glad.
But the above criticism is only with a certain standard expression of the uniformity principle. Indeed the stronger of the classical expressions can readily be reduced to something compatible with special-relativistic spacetime. This somewhat more modern statement is that the laws of physics should be independent of position (in some suitable coordinatization) on the total four-dimensional spacetime manifold. This statement makes no use of any preferred decomposition into space and time, and is therefore perfectly compatible with the special-relativistic model.
But the very fact that this issue, of what model we use for spacetime, was at the time so crucial was an indication that an even more fundamental shift was about to be made. This happened over the following decade, in the development of the general theory of relativity. In general relativity, spacetime is no longer a fixed background, upon which laws of physics are to be stated. Spacetime itself is a dynamical entity (it is nothing more and nothing less than the gravitational field). Spacetime, nor space or time themselves, are defined concepts independent of the laws of physics. The enlightenment notion of uniformity is then a vacuous assumption; so as of now, it is dead.
Nonetheless, a certain notion which we might refer to as proto-uniformity, remains. This notion is much weaker and much more vague, and I tend to think of it, using Wheeler's phrase, as "an idea for an idea," which these other uniformity "principles" have been intended to formalize. This notion might be expressed as the following assumption: that there exists a structure among "experiences" (a terribly ill-defined concept), which can be used, at least in principle, to predict "future experience" (an even more poorly defined concept). This is then related to the assumption that experience admits an ordering, and that this ordering is percieved as a process.
Here is the point which I cannot stress too strongly: that this notion of proto-uniformity is common to all of human culture. It is not a foundation of science. It is not a foundation of anything. But it existed long before science existed and it will continue to exist even after the Republican party brings science to an end.
Not only does proto-uniformity exist independent of science, but science can exist independent of proto-uniformity. When I do science, for instance, I don't know or care if anything I say will be predictive of anything. I study the structure of existence (or more precisely, of its mathematical models) purely because of its intrinsic beauty. Modern, mathematically rigorous science is the most complex, detailed work of art humankind has ever produced. Even as it exists today, without further development, it holds enough surprises to satisfy any aesthete over many repeated lifetimes.
My point is that the scientist is not the one who introduces the proto-uniformity concept. Rather it is the nonscientist, who considers himself to have had enough success with this strategy that it's worth his while to ask the scientist again what the mathematical models "predict."
I, as a person, not as a scientist, assume a proto-uniformity of experience. If that's your only contention, then you will be happy to learn that I concede that much. But again, this is not a concession of a conscious God, it is just the opposite.
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