Is there an afterlife?

[Lutiferre]

The universe has progressed according to science since the beginning WITHOUT any help of some divine source.

Possibly the most stupid statement I've ever heard.

[Cato]

Scientific laws would've been a better thing to say.

[Lutiferre]

Scientific laws would've been a better thing to say.

Not even that. It is always our scientific laws which to an extent (but not fully; we may have flawed understanding) progress according to the universe, not the universe that progresses according to our scientific laws.

[Hrolf Kraki]

Possibly the most stupid statement I've ever heard.

The universe operates according to its own set of laws that were prescribed at the origin of the universe. We just try to figure out what those laws are. Stop with the semantics. It's ridiculous.

[Psychonaut]

Not even that. It is always our scientific laws which to an extent (but not fully; we may have flawed understanding) progress according to the universe, not the universe that progresses according to our scientific laws.

I can't believe you guys are arguing about this. Do natural phenomena occur in ways that can generally be predicted? Yes, of course they do. Do we call the formalized methods of prediction scientific laws? Ditto. Is anyone here really claiming anything otherwise? No. Is semantic nitpicking about this pointless? You betcha.

[Poltergeist]

I can't believe you guys are arguing about this. Do natural phenomena occur in ways that can generally be predicted? Yes, of course they do. Do we call the formalized methods of prediction scientific laws? Ditto. Is anyone here really claiming anything otherwise? No. Is semantic nitpicking about this pointless? You betcha.

The mechanical view of the universe has been disproved long ago, by discoveries in quantum physics.

Do "laws of nature" exist per se? I don't think so. There is only some inexplicable chaos which we (try to) rationalize away by applying the abstract notion of "laws of nature".

And no, it's not nitpicking.

[Psychonaut]

The mechanical view of the universe has been disproved long ago, by discoveries in quantum physics.

Does the discovery of QM invalidate Newtonian mechanics? No. It only invalidates NM as a universal predictor; the pre-QM formulas still work just fine for phenomena that are outside of the scope of QM and Relativity. Furthermore, since QM and Relativity still don't mesh, you can't really say that something has been disproved by QM; we're quite sure that QM will be superseded by a TOE (at some point). Perhaps David Bohm and his camp will end up being correct and hidden variables will be discovered that account for the appearance of unpredictability at the quantum level. We'll have no way of knowing for sure until we can overcome the limitations of our current particle accelerators.

Do "laws of nature" exist per se? I don't think so. There is only some inexplicable chaos which we (try to) rationalize away by applying the abstract notion of "laws of nature".

So, when I, in a vacuum, drop a lead sphere, it's resultant motion doesn't occur in an entirely regular and repeatable manner?

[Poltergeist]

Does the discovery of QM invalidate Newtonian mechanics? No. It only invalidates NM as a universal predictor; the pre-QM formulas still work just fine for phenomena that are outside of the scope of QM and Relativity. Furthermore, since QM and Relativity still don't mesh, you can't really say that something has been disproved by QM; we're quite sure that QM will be superseded by a TOE (at some point). Perhaps David Bohm and his camp will end up being correct and hidden variables will be discovered that account for the appearance of unpredictability at the quantum level. We'll have no way of knowing for sure until we can overcome the limitations of our current particle accelerators.

It's not universal, you say it yourself. The "only" adverb is superfluous here. Furthermore, it is difficult to dismiss subatomic level by saying "only" since it is basis of all material world, thus a very important fact (not just a detail). What will be discovered in future, we don't know. Once there was no Newtonian mechanics either.

So, when I, in a vacuum, drop a lead sphere, it's resultant motion doesn't occur in an entirely regular and repeatable manner?

If something happens one thousand times (or how many one wishes), nothing guarantees the same will happen for one thousand and first time. We just, with a high probability, expect that it would repeat itself every time.

These abstractions called "laws of nature" do have a very useful practical value because they enable us to predict things with high probability. I am not denying that. It's only that I don't see them as existing in and of themselves, transcendentally, so to speak, as eternal and self-understood. They are our approximations and projections.

[Hrolf Kraki]

The mechanical view of the universe has been disproved long ago, by discoveries in quantum physics.

I'm familiar with quantum physics. Explain what you mean.

[Psychonaut]

It's not universal, you say it yourself. The "only" adverb is superfluous here. Furthermore, it is difficult to dismiss subatomic level by saying "only" since it is basis of all material world, thus a very important fact (not just a detail). What will be discovered in future, we don't know. Once there was no Newtonian mechanics either.

I guess the salient difference here is that while NM was believed for a long time to a finished core to a system that would expand to cover all phenomena, QM was know very soon after it's discovery to be something that would be replaced and would have to be replaced in the near future thanks to it's fundamental incompatibilities with our large scale formulas. Since it's never really been seen as a stopping point, I don't really see any point in basing assumptions about the ultimate nature of the universe on it. It's not like other theories that might be falsified in the future; we're certain this will be. We just don't know how yet.

If something happens one thousand times (or how many one wishes), nothing guarantees the same will happen for one thousand and first time. We just, with a high probability, expect that it would repeat itself every time.

I'm not a physicist, merely an interested layman with some background in the field, so I'm not quite sure about this: has there ever been a documented instance of a large-scale formula, in a situation in which all the necessary variables were known, not predicting the outcome? I ask because the only tests I can think of where this occurs deal with either photons or sub-atomic particles.