Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier discovered that breathing (respiration) and fire (combustion) operated on the same principle. It was one of the most startling unifications in the history of science, for it brought together the mundane realm of matter and the sacred realm of life, which humans had divided into separate magisteria.

The first great simplification was that of Isaac Newton, who unified the course of the planets with the trajectory of a falling apple. The shock of this discovery was greater by far than Lavoisier's. It wasn't just that Newton had dared to unify the Earthly realm of base matter with the obviously different and sacred celestial realm, once thought to be the abode of the gods. Newton's discovery gave rise to the notion of a universal law, one that is the same everywhere and everywhen, with literally zero exceptions.

Human beings live in a world of surface phenomena, and surface phenomena are divided into leaky categories with plenty of exceptions. A tiger does not behave like a buffalo. Most buffalo have four legs, but perhaps this one has three. Why would anyone think there would be laws that hold everywhere? It's just so obviously untrue.

The only time when it seems like we would want a law to hold everywhere is when we are talking about moral laws - tribal rules of behavior. Some tribe members may try to take more than their fair share of the buffalo meat - perhaps coming up with some clever excuse - so in the case of moral laws we do seem to have an instinct to universality. Yes, the rule about dividing the meat evenly applies to you, right now, whether you like it or not. But even here there are exceptions. If - for some bizarre reason - a more powerful tribe threatened to spear all of you unless Bob received twice as much meat on just this one occasion, you'd give Bob twice as much meat. The idea of a rule with literally no exceptions seems insanely rigid, the product of closed-minded thinking by fanatics so in the grip of their one big idea that they can't see the richness and complexity of the real universe.

This is the customary accusation made against scientists - the professional students of the richness and complexity of the real universe. Because when you actually look at the universe, it turns out to be, by human standards, insanely rigid in app...

JobuTopaki

JobuTopaki