Someone who wonders why the flow of electrons generates a current that can be utilized to power technology like automobiles, cellular phones, and gaming consoles might not just be wondering about the probable scientific correlations behind it, or about how the current scientific paradigm on the nature of electricity, which might be tossed aside by the masses within the year, relates to broader atomic theory and quantum physics. They might also or instead be pondering the more foundational, important issue of why out of all the many logically possible phenomena that could have happened when electrons flow, the generation of electric current is the one that is observed.
Likewise, one person might wonder about why fire is present in the observed natural world at all, or why it has the qualities it does rather than certain other logically possible alternatives. Another person might instead dwell on the scientific reasons why fire reduces some materials to ashes, and they might focus on hearsay about the temperature of the flame and the molecular composition of the burning material having to be just right to convert a given substance to ashes in a specific timeframe, as if that is the deepest level of metaphysics relevant to the issue. More than the physical/environmental circumstances having to be just right, why does fire consume materials to begin with instead of freezing or dampening them or having no macroscopic or chemical effect whatsoever?
Usually, when asked something like this, the typical person, a non-rationalist, will just recount what is directly observed (or allegedly observed by someone else in a likely distant laboratory or natural environment) or cite whatever the predominant paradigm is at the time while assuming it is true because it is contemporary and popular. The former is not an explanation as to why on a causal level one natural event follows another—as if a being with human limitations could ever know that one material thing in the external world is truly causing another rather than that the two are correlated on the level of subjective perception [1]! Still, neither the former nor the latter is a proof as to why, out of all the logical possibilities (and non-rationalists, who do not know or affirm axioms, cannot know what is possible or impossible), what we see is how the universe functions when this could have been very different.
Logic is intrinsically supreme over the scientific method (epistemologically) and the natural world itself (metaphysically) on every level [2]. No one will begin moving from the less foundational layer as to why a scientific occurrence would exist to the more foundational one without at least coming closer to being a rationalist. Non-rationalists, not knowing or accepting logical axioms and the other necessary truths that follow from them, cannot know anything, though they can assume things, for all knowledge depends on reason and all belief apart from logical necessity is assumption. Beyond not having genuine knowledge of any concept they happen to think of or hear about, they are also too philosophically lost to even grasp what truly makes something logically possible.
It is not empirical observation that makes something metaphysically possible. No, it must be logically possible already, which is dictated by consistency with the inherent truths of axioms, if it is going to be observed, and not every possibility about the physical cosmos is true at once. Why, when one lets go of a bucket, does it fall below instead of floating in place or diagonally ascending in one direction or another? This is just as logically possible as objects on Earth falling downward until a surface catches them. Why does a lithium ion battery not recharge itself by default rather than requiring the electrons to be forced back to the anode by an external cord? Why is there less oxygen at higher altitudes than at ground level instead of an equal or greater amount? Though no logically contradictory qualities are possible, the universe did not have to be as it is (or appears to be), and yet it is one particular set of logical possibilities that would apply to how it functions.
[2]. For elaboration, see posts such as these:
No comments:
Post a Comment