question authority

Wretchard and Beyond The Rim do:

Modern scientific reason says that the universe is governed by rules through and through; indeed, it is the aim of modern reason to disclose and reveal these laws through scientific inquiry. Yet, as Schopenhauer asks, where did this notion of a law-governed universe come from? No scientist can possibly argue that science has proven the universe to be rule-governed throughout all of space and all of time. As Kant argued in his Critique of Judgment, scientists must begin by assuming that nature is rational through and through: It is a necessary hypothesis for doing science at all. But where did this hypothesis, so vital to science, come from?

The rational universe, with laws that govern reality and keep everything spinning in its proper place (from electrons to planets), is fundamental to science. Lately there are those who argue that the rationality on which science so fundamentally depends comes from Intelligent Design. This is an interesting conundrum, since science itself has argued, using the concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics that things move from order to disorder, not the other way around. So where did all of this order, these working laws and limits that allow both a rational universe and the science to apprehend it come from, if not externally, from a designer?