Philosophy works also, at least realism does. My two year old is as good an epistemologist as any scientist, unless she is imagining a playmate. She wakes up,, affirms reality as different from sleep, affirms her own existence and ego , mine too, and the physical objects around her. She knows she”s loved and she has a concept of justice and other non-material realities, so she is no materialist. But when cetaceans and primates develop civilizations, art, music, literature, math, science and large hadron colliders , she no doubt will be a materialist.

Physical laws are an observation, and that they have existed “for eternity” means simply that they have existed (in some form) as long as time has.

Further, inflation makes an “eternity” mundane, see Susskind’s recent paper:

“If a multiversal citizen knows these things he will bet that he is too late to detect any evidence of the root.”

In other words, a putative beginning is effectively not relevant.

More generally, science works by similar selection.

Also the rest of the article is based in philosophy instead of science. A few examples:

“Absolute knowledge is impossible,”

Another old chestnut.

- Noether’s theorem to some small degree relates theories to absolute facts of conservation and symmetries.

- We have robust no go theorems in cases like “no cloning” or “no ftl (or physics crashes)”.

- As Sean Carroll notes, “The Laws Underlying The Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood“.

- We should probably add that realism is incorporated in all types of mechanics as “constrained reaction to constrained action”, as action-reaction of classical mechanics and observation- observables of quantum mechanics.

The existence of absolutes are of course separate from the existence of uncertainty in observation. Which leads us to this:

“by the Duhem-Quine thesis, no model can be falsified.”

To certify that experiments work and gives repeatable results is part of the process leading up to testing of theories and models. Since we observe that it works often enough, and often enough leads to rejection of theories – which is probably the science equivalent to “falsification” – we can probably reject such a hypothesis in case it can be made formal (doubtful).

In sum, science works, including biology – philosophy doesn’t.

Anyway, interesting the conclusion.. There is no neutral ground…
Cheers,
Denis

I’m always amazed by the lack of agreement with this seemingly obvious (in the light of modern neurology & technology) statement. I’ve had people throw Descartes at me as if he was a current professor somewhere.

• Cited from “Knowledge is the Edge of Science” – http://bit.ly/pOSGBt and derived from Nature Knowledge Theory (NKT), Science consistent with Evolution considering both of them are within domain of Scientific Knowledge. But, Science not consistent with Creationism considering the last is within “Knowledgeable Science”, a term applied for domain where Knowledge becoming subject, alive and having consciousness contrary with Science which is just an object with no consciousness.

• But, viewed from NKT, the most important is, both Science (representing Data and Information) and Knowledge (representing also Wisdom) are within Nature Knowledge continuum. The paradigm used here is : “The Universe or the Nature Knowledge is the source and center of Consciousness” rather than “Mind Brain or Human Being is the source and center of Consciousness as derived from DIKW model”

• In this circumstance we tend to use the first paradigm, considering by using it, we able to reconstruct the epistemology as well as ontology of current Universe up to time of Big Bang through Top-Down mechanism approach by Inverted Paradigm Method or “Reverse engineering” applied to “Universe Trilogy” a term we coined to Nature Knowledge, Energy and Matter as an entity of fabrics of the Universe

• Brief overview ref of this short narration at http://mobeeknowledge.ning.com/forum/topics/comprehensive-guide-to-future-science-environment-decomposing-kno – (“Comprehensive Guide to Future Science Environment : Decomposing Knowledge with Inverted Paradigm Method”)

• Note on one of our statement : …. ……k – constant approaches 0.0 such as the ecosystem of Higgs Boson, will make all scientific efforts practically a “mission impossible” . We dare to say, almost impossible to any scientific effort goes beyond “our illusion dream land” with “k” = 1.0 to leap into “absolute dream land” with “k” less than 1.0 or practically = 0.0 considering that “…… space-time is only the notion of human being in the universe to accommodate the existence of Matter and Energy…..

“unbelievers argue the opposite; the existence of a God means science is impossible since he/she/it could override the rules of nature at will and there would be no reason to assume constant laws”

So the unbelievers think even though God may not exist, the physical laws must exist? So they believe physical laws have existed for eternity?

Once again, we see that there is no neutral ground in matters of belief.