# are the laws just theories
**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554
**Category:** Non-Philosophical Chat
**Created:** [June 29, 2013, 2:13pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554 "2013-06-29T14:13:17Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 2:13pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/1 "2013-06-29T14:13:17Z")
I have been looking at the laws of thermodynamics…I don’t like the term laws…I think they should be theories…
how can we say law when we don’t know the universe or dark matter and energy…
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### Author:  [@anon](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/anon)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 3:19pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/2 "2013-06-29T15:19:54Z")
> [@turtle](#):
>
> I have been looking at the laws of thermodynamics…I don’t like the term laws…I think they should be theories…
> how can we say law when we don’t know the universe or dark matter and energy…
[en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific\_law](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law)
A quick read of the first section should clarify things for you.
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/3 "2013-06-29T17:08:15Z")
> [@anon](#):
>
> > [@turtle](#):
> >
> > I have been looking at the laws of thermodynamics…I don’t like the term laws…I think they should be theories…
> > how can we say law when we don’t know the universe or dark matter and energy…
>
> [en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific\_law](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law)
>
> A quick read of the first section should clarify things for you.
well anon I found that useful…do you feel the 2 laws of thermodynamics have any problems or limitations…
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 5:57pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/4 "2013-06-29T17:57:20Z")
> [@turtle](#):
>
> > [@anon](#):
> >
> > > [@turtle](#):
> > >
> > > I have been looking at the laws of thermodynamics…I don’t like the term laws…I think they should be theories…
> > > how can we say law when we don’t know the universe or dark matter and energy…
> >
> > [en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific\_law](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_law)
> >
> > A quick read of the first section should clarify things for you.
>
> well anon I found that useful…do you feel the 2 laws of thermodynamics have any problems or limitations…
I guess what im trying to say--------I think these 2 thermodynamic laws are not all inclusive now…
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### Author:  [@anon](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/anon)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 6:19pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/5 "2013-06-29T18:19:24Z")
Well there’s the whole ‘closed systems’ thing. Is that what you mean?
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 6:29pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/6 "2013-06-29T18:29:04Z")
> [@anon](#):
>
> Well there’s the whole ‘closed systems’ thing. Is that what you mean?
anon----I have been reading a biology text…so the entropy of a living cell is low and outside it is higher but that doesn’t violate the second law because you need to consider the total entropy of the universe[the organism and its surroundings increases]…well what are they defining as the universe…how do we know the entropy of the universe is increasing…
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### Author:  [@anon](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/anon)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/7 "2013-06-29T18:38:26Z")
> [@turtle](#):
>
> > [@anon](#):
> >
> > Well there’s the whole ‘closed systems’ thing. Is that what you mean?
>
> anon----I have been reading a biology text…so the entropy of a living cell is low and outside it is higher but that doesn’t violate the second law because you need to consider the total entropy of the universe[the organism and its surroundings increases]…well what are they defining as the universe…how do we know the entropy of the universe is increasing…
I’m not a scientist. I just know there’s no such thing as an actual closed system, unless the universe (i.e. “everything”) is one. I don’t worry much about specific scientific ideas unless I discover some relevance. I figure they mostly know what they’re doing, if they aren’t too grandiose in their conclusions. Not that a grandiose conclusion is necessarily wrong.
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/8 "2013-06-29T18:52:11Z")
> [@anon](#):
>
> > [@turtle](#):
> >
> > > [@anon](#):
> > >
> > > Well there’s the whole ‘closed systems’ thing. Is that what you mean?
> >
> > anon----I have been reading a biology text…so the entropy of a living cell is low and outside it is higher but that doesn’t violate the second law because you need to consider the total entropy of the universe[the organism and its surroundings increases]…well what are they defining as the universe…how do we know the entropy of the universe is increasing…
>
> I’m not a scientist. I just know there’s no such thing as an actual closed system, unless the universe (i.e. “everything”) is one. I don’t worry much about specific scientific ideas unless I discover some relevance. I figure they mostly know what they’re doing, if they aren’t too grandiose in their conclusions. Not that a grandiose conclusion is necessarily wrong.
thanks anon…I just had a bug up my ass…
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### Author:  [@anon](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/anon)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 6:57pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/9 "2013-06-29T18:57:31Z")
Nothing wrong with that. Say more - what’s on your mind?
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### Author:  [@Flannel\_Jesus](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Flannel_Jesus)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/10 "2013-06-29T19:00:14Z")
A lot of people would agree with you, Turtle, about the second law of thermodynamics not being a proper ‘law’, but probably not for the reasons you have. A proper understanding of the second ‘law’ brings most to realize that, rather than an unbreakable and always-true fact about everything in the universe, it is instead better phrased as a ‘statistical certainty.’ Entropy increases, not because there is any hard-coded law in the universe requiring entropy to increase, but because the laws that are hard-coded into the universe almost always tend to result in an increase in entropy. It’s not so much a hard law as it is an emergent quasi-law.
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:13pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/11 "2013-06-29T19:13:20Z")
> [@anon](#):
>
> Nothing wrong with that. Say more - what’s on your mind?
actually I was disgusted with some of this physics shit…
my book said “every energy transfer or transformation increases the entropy of the universe”…so the universe
is becoming more disordered I guess…that would cross a rabbis eyes…
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Reasonable](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Mr_Reasonable)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:13pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/12 "2013-06-29T19:13:32Z")
Here’s an interesting paper that touches on this topic. I liked it. Maybe you’ll like it too Turtle.
[informationphilosopher.com/s … k\_laws.pdf](http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/lewis/Are_we_free_to_break_laws.pdf)
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:30pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/13 "2013-06-29T19:30:21Z")
> [@Smears](#):
>
> Here’s an interesting paper that touches on this topic. I liked it. Maybe you’ll like it too Turtle.
>
> [informationphilosopher.com/s … k\_laws.pdf](http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/lewis/Are_we_free_to_break_laws.pdf)
thanks smears…wow that was really over my ability to understand…
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### Author:  [@rununder](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/rununder)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/14 "2013-06-29T19:36:21Z")
> [@turtle](#):
>
> I have been looking at the laws of thermodynamics…I don’t like the term laws…I think they should be theories…
> how can we say law when we don’t know the universe or dark matter and energy…
Yes turtles, every law is a derivative of theory or hypothesis.
Law is merely the extended and realized application of an underlying theory. Theories are built upon axioms and premises. Axioms are mostly synonymous with the concept of law. An axiom is an established, strong premise. Such as “I exist” or “things exist”, or “Earth is spherical” and “Earth has gravity”.
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/15 "2013-06-29T19:42:22Z")
> [@](#):
>
> actually I was disgusted with some of this physics shit…
> my book said “every energy transfer or transformation increases the entropy of the universe”…so the universe
> is becoming more disordered I guess…that would cross a rabbis eyes…
Why do you care if the entropy of the universe or a system is increasing? What difference does it make to you?
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### Author:  [@turtle](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/turtle)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 7:51pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/16 "2013-06-29T19:51:47Z")
> [@phyllo](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > actually I was disgusted with some of this physics shit…
> > my book said “every energy transfer or transformation increases the entropy of the universe”…so the universe
> > is becoming more disordered I guess…that would cross a rabbis eyes…
>
> Why do you care if the entropy of the universe or a system is increasing? What difference does it make to you?
well I am interested in science and knowledge…maybe you can help me…
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### Author:  [@James\_S\_Saint](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/James_S_Saint)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 8:02pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/17 "2013-06-29T20:02:23Z")
> [@turtle](#):
>
> > [@anon](#):
> >
> > Nothing wrong with that. Say more - what’s on your mind?
>
> actually I was disgusted with some of this physics shit…
> my book said “every energy transfer or transformation increases the entropy of the universe”…so the universe
> is becoming more disordered I guess…that would cross a rabbis eyes…
And they are provably wrong about that (as my RM:AO demonstrates).
What is called the “Second LAW of Thermodynamics” was never a “law” (Maxwell logically disproved it 130 years ago), yet it is the only theory that is religiously commended to be accepted as a LAW. So, to get around all of the many proofs against it, they have, over the past 50 years, reworded it over and over until now it merely says that there is a “tendency” toward higher entropy. Since when was a “tendency” considered a “physical law”?
The universe as a whole is not becoming more disordered. That is only the small mind perspective of humans, much like the “Atlantis is sinking” bit or that the Earth is flat. When the elite speakers for truth can only see certain things, they spout the absolute truth of merely those things as though there was nothing else to see (for YOU).
Today, subatomic particles are created (anentropic entities). But not by giving them more order from outside, rather by providing a dense enough field of chaotic energy that the ordered particle forms by itself and then remains stable for billions of years.
What contemporary scientists don’t see is how to cause such a high density field out in space such that particles form in huge quantities that would make it obvious that the universe wasn’t merely decaying.
The notion of the universe decaying is a big part of current psycho-politics, “social engineering”. Great lengths have been gone to in order to present the mindset that “the world is falling apart and there is nothing anyone can do about it”. That is why you see so very much negative news, even the positive that they present is presented such as to seem irrelevant. And that issue was argued over during the early '70’s because many saw the negative being intentionally promoted.
The “Second Law” is there to convince you that the world is dying and thus you must submit and give your support to your “leaders”/“users”. There is no actual science involved in the second law. It is pure social engineering psychology.
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Reasonable](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Mr_Reasonable)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 8:10pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/18 "2013-06-29T20:10:04Z")
Think about this turtle, some shit we just gotta say we already know, if we’re gonna start reasoning from someplace to get someplace else. And since that’s what we gotta do, we just gotta do it. The best things to reason from are things that are true by self reference, or tautologies as you may see them called. Basically, it’s a sentence like x=x, or a syllogism like S is a man, All men are mortal, therefore S is mortal. Those things are recursive, tautological, analytically necessary true by self reference, whatever you wanna call em. Whether or not they are true isn’t a matter of context so much as it is a matter of the structure of the sentence itself.
Now if you get into some philosophy of science, you should read a guy names Thomas Kuhn. He’s the guy who came up with the idea of the paradigm shift in science.
You see, science will sometimes reason from axioms that aren’t true by self reference, simply because the axiom seems true based on repeated experiments. Now just cause it’s not a self referencing sentence doesn’t mean it’s not true, it just means that it might or might not be true given the context in which we understand it. So in science, when you’ve got something that might not be self referentially true, yet you’ve been reasoning from it for years with great increases in utility as the result, then you call that axiom a “paradigm”. Think about when people used to think the world was flat. They reasoned from that when trying to figure out other things about the world. Since then we realized it’s not flat, and then we had what Kuhn calls a “paradigm shift” in science. We gotta throw out our old axiom and get a new one, because we falsified it, like good scientists do. That’s the problem with science. For something to be true, it has to be falsifiable. That’s why axioms that don’t rely on context don’t work so well when we come out of the abstract and into the lab. Self referencing statements can’t be falsified.
So what does this all mean? Think of the "pasradigm"of science right now as a whole set of a bunch of different axioms. You can call them laws. So there’s supposed to be a difference between regular laws, and physical laws. Regular laws you can break, and get consequences, physical laws are like laws with a capital L. You can’t break em.
So what Lewis is essentially getting at in that paper, is that if you find yourself bumping up against a physical law, and you then see yourself “breaking” that physical law, then what you’ve actually done wasn’t breaking a physical law at all. You were testing something to see if it was actually a physical law, and when you broke it, you found out it wasn’t. So now you gotta throw out that bad axiom that you falsified by breaking it when it was supposed to be a physical law, and you gotta come up with a new proposition from which you can reason.
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### Author:  [@phyllo](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/phyllo)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/19 "2013-06-29T20:16:57Z")
> [@](#):
>
> well I am interested in science and knowledge…maybe you can help me…
I have never worried about the entropy of anything except when I had to calculate the performance of heat engines and refrigeration systems in school. Very useful for that.
I don’t know why you would be disgusted by some physics concept.
You don’t agree with the physics interpretation of some observations? Or you don’t like the way the universe works?
In the first case, the interpretation does not alter reality and in the second case, you can’t alter reality.
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### Author:  [@James\_S\_Saint](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/James_S_Saint)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/are-the-laws-just-theories/36554/20 "2013-06-29T20:17:58Z")
Reasoning begins with the declaration of defined concepts, not presumption of truths. Science’s job is to try to disprove the usefulness of the concept so that only useful concepts remain to be used as “truth”. But Science has become a religion that now demands acceptance or else. The Second Law is merely one of very many examples.