以科學為信仰

LLH

著名科學普及作家P. W. C. Davies在最近在紐約時報發表了一篇題為Taking Science on Faith的文章，現與大家分享：

按此參閱原文

Taking Science on Faith
By PAUL DAVIES
Published: November 24, 2007

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.

Although scientists have long had an inclination to shrug aside such questions concerning the source of the laws of physics, the mood has now shifted considerably. Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

ianleehkas

Karl Popper認為，「一種不能用任何想像得到的事件反駁掉的理論是不科學的。不可反駁不是（如人們時常設想的）一個理論的長處，而是它的短處」。換句話說，若一個理論或假說是「科學的」科學必定是「可證偽的」。很多人不能接受這種見解，覺得科學必然是真的，真的事又豈能是偽的呢？答案是「不」。事實上，每個科學家都抱有這種「新」想法。

愛恩斯坦說：「實驗的數目不論有多少，都無法證明我是對的；但只需一個實驗．便可證明我是錯的。」

" 見　王永雄及鄭啟明合著的<<物理縱橫>>ｐ８"

[ 本帖最後由 ianleehkas 於 2008-1-9 00:52 編輯 ]

mca

No doubt we accept science for logical thinking. But there is a point here:

FAITH FIRST, THEN SCIENCE (先有信仰，才有科學。)

Example 1 :
We trust firstly 1 + 1 = 2, then we develop arithmetic.

Example 2:  
We trust firstly the two postulations by Einstein, i.e.
The fundamental laws of the universe do not depend on a person’s location or motion.
The velocity of light is the same to all observers;
then we can accept Einstein’s Special Relativity and test it.

Example 3. We accept firstly our universe started from a singularity. Then we accept those scientific models raised in the Big Bang Theory.

What I mean is that whenever science fails to prove or disapprove something in the first place (which is common), human used to take their faiths by instinct which may vary between persons and races. This has been obsersevationally true since civilization.

AC

ianleehkas

原帖由 mca 於 2008-1-9 16:24 發表
No doubt we accept science for logical thinking. But there is a point here:

FAITH FIRST, THEN SCIENCE (先有信仰，才有科學。)

Example 1 :
We trust firstly 1 + 1 = 2, then we develop arithmetic.

Examp ...

補充：

本來，初生嬰先並沒有1 + 1 = 2　這種概念，只是在學習過程中，透個歸納學習，如果把一件東西與另一件東西放在一起，就是兩件東西，於是發展了加數。但加數本身的道理，如果從經驗世界中抽離，便是一種必然及絕對的學問。不會因為
任何經驗世界的事而被推翻。如果把它放入經驗世界做運算，也只有可被利用作為描述語言或不可被利用作為描述語言這兩種可能。

／／Example 2:  
We trust firstly the two postulations by Einstein, i.e.
The fundamental laws of the universe do not depend on a person’s location or motion.
The velocity of light is the same to all observers;
then we can accept Einstein’s Special Relativity and test it.／／

科學家的懷疑或信仰，是一些可被檢證的命題。以這些命題做假設，便可用實驗去檢證它。

mca

Hi Ian

First Kung He Fat Choi.

What you mentioned is the foundation of scientific methods; indeed we exercise them for every branches of science.

However there is always a certain point in human lives where human begin to believe something (assumption, postulation or even religion) without waiting it is true or false (of course truth and false are relative speaking). “Assumption” seems to be the best excuse of scientists, who honor it as their “sacred” cow ! For instance, science students accept the existence of gravity without asking why there is gravity; why light behaves as particles in one case and waves in another case; why the uncertainty principle in quantum theory not reflected in classical experiments; why the universe began in singularity as assumed in the big bang, and then inflation within 0.000000000xxx seconds at speed much faster than light ….

It looks to me that today’s “theories” (I better called them ideas) pile up on unproven hypothesis over unproven hypothesis, resulting in a difficulty of being so “elastic”, i.e. they have so many loose ends that they can be stretched to fit many observational facts without a strong convincing basis.

All these「信住先」behavior are equivalent to (IMHO) 先有信仰，才有科學。

AC

BillYeung

Alan,

Very well said. 你的看法、 你的「信仰」, 有錯的可能, 遠比那些自以為「擁有絕對真理」的教徒好.

Bill

[ 本帖最後由 BillYeung 於 2008-2-8 14:54 編輯 ]

David^_^b

原帖由 mca 於 2008/2/8 12:49 發表
Hi Ian

It looks to me that today’s “theories” (I better called them ideas) pile up on unproven hypothesis over unproven hypothesis, resulting in a difficulty of being so “elastic”, i.e. they have so many loose ends that they can be stretched to fit many observational facts without a strong convincing basis. ...

Another example is the inner struture of the Sun.  We can only probe the surface of the Sun, while all other inside is built on hydrodynamics (how fluid flows), etc., and eventually nuclear reaction among hydrogen atoms ...

We have not seen if hydrogen inside the Sun flows like the fluid we know, we have not seen 4 hydrogen nuclei combine to form a helium nucleus ... all are theories / models, which are somehow checked quite good in fitting some lab experiments / observations, hence we trust the solar model built on such bricks.

That is how our loosy knowledge built up.

David^_^b

Add-on:

You may like to take a quick look at the following book:
What We Believe but Cannot Prove

[ 本帖最後由 David^_^b 於 2008-2-10 23:31 編輯 ]