利用者:菊地 英仁/Cosmogony/Epistemological limitations to cosmogony
Epistemological limitations to cosmogony
[編集]The assumptions of naturalism that underlie the scientific method have led some scientists, especially observationalists, to question whether the ultimate reason or source for the universe to exist can be answered in a scientific fashion. In particular, the principle of sufficient reason seems to indicate that there should be such an explanation, but whether a satisfactory explanation can be obtained through scientific inquiry is debatable. A scientific examination of cosmogony using existing physical models would face many challenges. For example, equations used to develop models of the origin do not in themselves explain how the conditions of the universe that the equations model came to be in the first place.
Theistic explanations for origins indicate one or more supernatural beings as the explanation, though atheist commentators often point to this as an argument from ignorance or a God of the gaps fallacy, and that such an assumption provides no explanation for existence of the deity. Nondual explanations by contrast state that the very question is misleading, since it contains erroneous assumptions of beginnings, endings and the nature of existence itself, and consider the visible universe as phenomenology.
As a result of this, scientific cosmogonies are sometimes supplemented by reference to metaphysical and theistic belief systems. The problem can be summarized as three classical paradoxes. These paradoxes (discussed by both Kierkegaard and Leibniz) are:
- reconciling a doctrine of causation (similar to the 13th century proof of God posed by Thomas Aquinas);
- reconciling the conservation law ("something from nothing");
- reconciling issues of temporal (as in Zeno's paradoxes) and logical regression.
However, some of the metaphysical principles used to formulate these classical paradoxes no longer enjoy an unchallenged status as laws of thought. For instance, quantum mechanics gives an independent motivation to challenge the principle of sufficient reason.