Science's Real First Principle

First principles are elementary ideas about the essential characteristics of matter, time and how these can change. We cannot prove the truth of a first principle, although it is possible to show that its consequences are absurd. Understanding science's first principles can help one make rational judgments about scientific earth histories.

A First Principle is the foundation for science.The Greeks were the first to seek first principles (archai) upon which to build science. An arche (Latin principium) is the primary assumption of science. Plato, in the Republic Book 7: "For when a man knows not his own first principle, and when the conclusion and intermediate steps are also constructed out of he knows not what, how can he imagine that such a fabric of convention can ever become science?" Plato had no respect for mathematicians. "I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning." He thought that only the philosopher was equipped to reason - because they began by examining first principles.

Why are first principles so important? A small error in assumptions can lead to great errors in conclusions. Yet science textbooks start with operational definitions, how to allegedly measure matter and time. They do so without examining the assumption upon which those measurements depend. Students of science are never explicitly taught the historical first principle of their system. It is simply assumed as self-evident. Since science must have a starting point, some have suggested after-the-fact first principles, such as:
  1. The universe is explainable by natural laws.
  2. The laws of physics are mathematical and logical.
  3. The laws of physics apply throughout the universe.

If the universe is explainable by natural laws, then why do scientists use unnatural, never observed phenomena to explain the distant universe? They explain the origin of the universe with the absurdity of a tiny bit of vacuum exploding and creating everything out of nothing. The scientific universe is 25% phantom, invisible matter. According to scientists, about 70% of the universe's substance is dark energy that resides in the vacuum. This immaterial stuff allegedly accelerates galaxies to close to the speed of light. According to scientists, the distant universe is only 1% visible. All of the invisible things were contrived without a shred of direct evidence - using the alleged laws of nature. If 99% of the universe is operating in unnatural ways, then scientists cannot legitimately claim to have discovered the laws of nature.

Are logic and mathematics nature's language? Scientific papers are black with mathematical symbols. It is without question that, if you accept the scientific operational definitions of matter and time, mathematics works in local spaces and nearby times. However, when they force their definitions, mathematics and logic on the distant universe, it results in the absurdities of vacuum forces and invisible matter. If mathematics and logic only work locally, they could not be the language of nature.

Are the laws of physics the same everywhere in the universe? This principle actually came from the Bible. God asked Job a rhetorical question, Job 38:33 "Do you know the ordinances of the heavens, Or fix their rule over the earth?" The context shows that God does not expect us to find the real laws of the cosmos, even though He tells us they are universal laws.

We encounter the same problem (a magical universe) when scientists assume that their laws of physics are at work everywhere in the universe. A more basic question is, is the universe homogeneous? Homogeneous means consisting of parts all of the same kind. Are local atoms the same as distant, ancient ones? After all, the real laws of the universe could decree how atoms change relationally with age. (Relational change cannot be measured locally because the definitions, the units of measurement and the instruments would be affected together.) Yet we can see relational change because we see the past, as it was, in the distant universe. Evidently primordial matter was similar to modern matter since the spectra of primordial atoms are minuscule ratios of local spectra. Despite these significant differences, observed in all ancient galaxies, the scientific laws of physics presuppose that all atoms do perpetual motion. Isn't that a ridiculous presumption? Scientists must make this assumption since they cannot define invariant clock-time without presupposing that something, somewhere is immutable and oscillates with perpetual motion. Scientists fill the distant universe with magical, invisible things in order to support their homogeneous universe - that atoms are perpetual motion machines.

It would seem that these suggested first principles are improvised foundations, contrived after the real first principle was already accepted as self-evident. The real first principle of science came first in history. What is the real first principle of science? The Bible predicts that in the last days false teachers will obfuscate (Greek lanthano) the geology of earth and the history of the starry heavens with an idea. They will say "panta outos diamenei" - all things remain the same in being. (2 Peter 3:3 - 6).

Is the idea that matter does not change "in being" a historically important principle of science? Some of the writings of the first philosophers have survived. The pagan philosophers struggled with the problem of how to build science if matter changes itself. Each school of philosophers suggested first principles, archai, to solve the problem of changing substance. After 300 years of debates, Aristotle wrote that we must just assume that the properties of matter are fixed. Fifteen hundred years later, a mendicant friar suggested that the universities of Europe adopt Aristotle's system. Aquinas interpreted Aristotle's idea in Latin for the universities. All matter can change its properties in many ways. (Anyone can see that water can boil, freeze or combine with cement to make concrete.) Thomas insisted that one kind of change is not allowed - for matter to change its essence - Latin essentia. He insisted that the only way for matter to change its essence (its being) is if it ceases to be. In Aquinas' system, matter cannot change relationally, change its being, change all its attributes in parallel. This idea became the historical basis for Western science, especially its operational definition of time and its mathematics.
Do all scientists today accept the idea that matter is NOT continually changing itself? It is beyond question that scientists accept perpetual motion atoms, since by international agreement the primary standard in science is the atomic clock. Lengths, velocities, accelerations, gravity, energy, mass and temperature are secondary definitions - that depend on the concept of perpetual motion atoms (unchanging duration seconds). The entire structure of scientific measuring, its methods, its mathematics, its constants, its laws of physics and earth-histories all hinge on the idea that atoms do perpetual motion. The real, historical first principle is the idea that the properties of matter are not emergent.

Biblical physics is very simple. It requires no mathematics or complex ways of measuring. The Bible states that the whole creation is phthora, fundamentally changing. Biblical physics is confirmed with sight, not with an invisible universe. When we compare billions of distant galaxies, at many ranges, we see that they grew from tiny naked galaxies packed with stars to huge, local, growth spirals. Atomic clocks and galactic orbits are observed to accelerate in unison, change together, as galaxies grew. What we see violates every law of scientific physics, because it violates the scientific first principle, that the properties of matter are not emergent. Galaxies cannot grow into huge growth spirals unless matter follows biblical physics - changes relationally with age. (The reader who is interested in biblical physics should carefully examine the Greek verbs in Romans 8:19 - 22.)

Understanding the real first principle of science, the historical one, gives one the tools for making decisions about whether scientific earth-histories are valid.

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Last modified on December 3, 2008