Do you think E=Mc^2 is an invention or discovery?
Hint, it's the referent to the equation and not the equation itself that I ask about.
The moon is a discovery. That sucker would be there even if no one in all of history (or prehistoric times) looked up to notice it. The word, "moon," well, that's something altogether different.
An equation is to a word as the facts of the world is to the referent of the word. Don't think for a minute that the moon is literally on a piece of paper just because someone writes the word moon on paper, and don't think for a moment that a law of nature is really what's written because a notational representation is written.
It's so easy to think of a law as written when we speak in terms of there being a saying "letter of the law" when speaking about the law being as it's written, yet the fact of the matter is, the law doesn't go up in flames when the law as notated in written form goes up in flames housed in a law book.
The laws of nature are most assuredly independent of man. The physics behind natural occurances are just what they are, and they would of been the way they are whether man ever came upon the scene of life or not. The fact that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared is a fact of the world that was discovered by man, just as the existence of that orbiting body we all call the moon is a factual current state of affairs.
And people think statements are the laws. That's right up there with confusing the word with what is referenced by it. Right up there with confusing an equation with what it's about. Confusing a statement (the dang statement itself) with what the statement is all about. Confusion everywhere.
Pictures of unicorns aren't unicorns. Picture of daddy ain't daddy. Laws of nature are not statements.
Ok, so I guess the issue is you don't understand what has been argued against using the expression 'laws of nature'.
The issue is that the expression 'laws of nature' connotes, and inevitably suggests, a certain view of nature which has become obsolete. The term 'law' by itself suggests that there are two distinct things: there is the law itself as one thing, and then there is what the law is meant to apply to, as something else. If we tried to conceive of a law of nature in this sense, we would have the law itself as one thing, and then some natural phenomenon which would somehow obey the law. This conception is now obsolete.
So, the issue is that the expression 'laws of nature' is now seen as inappropriate for expressing the modern perspective. So, the problem with the expression 'laws of nature' is that it is no longer believed to have, to have ever had, any referent. Laws of nature simply are no longer believed to exist, according to the modern perspective.
We obviously still use scientific expressions, such as E = mc
2, which are considered valid and thought of as having a proper referent. However, the nature of this referent is that it is inextricably a part of the rather complex process that allows human beings to represent nature in the first place. This process is itself inextricably dependent on the nature of human beings. So the assumption is that scientific expressions relative to nature are somehow always dependent on human nature.
That doesn't mean that these expressions don't have a referent. Each is thought of as having a proper referent. However, this referent is no longer assumed to be some fundamental phenomenon. Rather, it's an expression of the interaction between some unknown fundamental phenomenon and the human-dependent process of scientific experimentation and discovery. As such, the referent is best thought of as epiphenomenon. It doesn't exist outside our representation of the process of scientific experimentation. This process is itself an integral part of nature, but it is apart from any fundamental phenomenon which is somehow driving the way that scientific experiment unfold.
That's not to say that it is useless. In fact, the main difference between today's perspective and that of scientists in the past, is that scientific expressions and theories are now valued as useful whereas they where in the past valued as being true to the physical world (to the extent that they were assumed as correct). So nowadays, it's all about observed regularities. Whether there is anything like regularities at a fundamental level is therefore anybody's guess. The driving rationale for scientific discoveries is that experiments can be replicated and theories can do some useful work for humans. To insists on laws of nature is to needlessly perpetuate an obsolete and misleading notion that's misrepresenting the current scientific perspective.
EB
