Scientific Contingencies

Non-rationalists are too stupid to generally even think of doing anything but assume that what they see could not possibly be an illusion, or even an unverifiable phenomenon, which spurs them to ignore the abstract necessary truths that are the real core of reality in favor of contingent scientific perceptions and laws.  Are scientific laws uniform across the entire cosmos?  Could scientific laws have been different or could they change at any moment?  Such things almost never enter their mind, if they ever do at all.  Of course, scientific laws and perceptions are all contingent on metaphysical factors far deeper than themselves, on logical truths that ground reality and determine possibility, on (when it comes to scientific perceptions and not the laws of nature themselves).  Since scientific laws, the very existence of an external world that laws of nature constrain, and the subjective experience of sensory perceptions are not necessary truths, much less fundamental logical axioms, of course scientific laws could have been different or could suddenly shift without warning as long as whatever happens is logically possible.

Fire could have correlated to sensations of cold and ice with with sensations of heat.  Sugar could have been healthy for teeth.  Various objects could have floated above the surface of Earth if one released them from the hand instead of falling to the ground, and humans could have shed and regenerated limbs as normally as they do other things like falling asleep.  Electrons could have been clustered together in the atomic nucleus and protons and neutrons could have "orbited" them.  Living bodies could have had other fluids inside of them besides blood or could have carried no fluid within them at all, with creatures not requiring blood or any replacement for survival.  Electricity could have been harmless even upon direct touch.  Earth could have had twin suns like certain planets from science fiction, and the periods of time where the sunlight bathes the world could have been much longer or shorter than we are used to.  None of these things are logical necessities like how some things cannot not logically follow from other things or how it is impossible for nothing at all to be true (as that would then be true itself).

Many more hypothetical examples could have been the case.  There is no such thing as a scientific necessity that rivals logical necessity, for scientific laws cannot violate the laws of logic and all their necessary truths, which are the only things that could not have been any different than they are.  It could not be true that a conclusion that follows from its premise--not what someone assumes follows from a premise, but what truly does--is false or that anything else could have logically followed; it is not true that scientific laws could have not have differed from the perceived laws of nature we encounter, though even a different set of physics (all scientific laws are really just different laws of physics) would still have to be consistent with logical truths even if the same scientific phenomena did not occur throughout the entire cosmos.  Because a person can rely on logical axioms and their ramifications without realizing it and yet still assume that the sensory experiences they have must be accurate, so many people regard subjectively perceived, metaphysically contingent scientific laws that could have differed as the core of reality while not even thinking of the true heart of all things: logical axioms and what follows from them.

Contradictions cannot be true.  A thing can only be what it is.  These are other logical axioms beyond the aforementioned examples, and these are things that could not change or have been different.  Whether given laws of nature or even nature itself exist whatsoever is a matter of logical possibility.  Whether logical axioms are true is a matter of intrinsic necessity (and one of the necessary ramifications is that it follows that logical truths are the only thing that has to exist, the only thing that could not have not existed and the only thing that exists without in some way metaphysically relying on something else).  Reason and not science is the foundation of all.  Even God, which transcends the natural world as the uncaused cause, could not have brought logical truths into existence or altered them because they are true by necessity, either making up the small number of self-evident, self-necessary axioms or making up the larger number of truths that follow from some other truth or concept--even if the concept itself is not true.  However, the laws of nature at least depend on the uncaused cause to either create or permit them.  If the uncaused cause willed it, phenomena like gravity or electromagnetism could change or cease to exist altogether.  This is not and could not possibly have been true of the laws of logic.