Re: What is Natural Law?

[Howard Pattee <***>]

Judith wrote:
> I posted an excerpt from "Life, Itself" that discusses Robert Rosen's 
> concept of Natural Law. He was describing, in that excerpt, how the very 
> fact that we are discussing phenomena in the ambience (and arguing about 
> what constitutes proof that we have figured out various real consistencies 
> in the ambience) means that certain things have to be true. The fact that 
> those things have to be true in order for us to be discussing and modeling 
> it is an embodiment of this truth: There are consistent principles 
> underlying phenomena we perceive in "the ambience" and these principles 
> echo over and over. This is Natural Law, in totality.

HP: This sounds like the so-called "Strong Anthropic Principle" (SAP) which 
can be stated: The Universe must have those properties which allow life to 
develop within it at some stage of its history. (Barrow and Tipler, The 
Anthropic Cosmological Principle, 1988, p. 21)

There is controversy over whether this is an analytic or synthetic 
principle. On the one hand, to be able to make this statement we must exist 
in this Universe ("cogito ergo sum") and therefore the Universe must have 
the right properties. On the other hand, the properties although logically 
necessary may not be sufficient so life's existence may be only conditional.

George Wald said it as concisely as possible: "A physicist is just atoms 
way of knowing about atoms."

Howard