I believe that there is an “order” to nature—a conviction that the physical laws of yesterday govern today and will raise the sun again tomorrow. Upon this solid foundation of belief, humanity has built civilizations and designed the future. However, the moment I peer beneath this certainty, I encounter a bewildering truth: the scientific foundations I so highly praise as “reason” actually stand precariously upon the realm of unprovable “faith.”
The Trap of Induction: Does Repetition Guarantee Truth?
The “problem of induction” posed by David Hume remains valid. Can the experience of the past, repeated billions of times, guarantee the necessity of the future? Logically, the answer is “no.” No causal necessity exists between the fact that the sun rose in the past and the prediction that it will rise tomorrow.
I merely accept the massive premise of the “uniformity of nature” without criticism. As Hume pointed out, this is not a rational judgment but a “psychological habit” for survival. Even if laws that have persisted for millennia were suddenly overturned tomorrow morning, from the perspective of logic, that would not be an error—it would simply be a “new event.” Ultimately, my confidence in order is not a conclusion reached by reason, but an instinctive choice made by a human being unable to endure uncertainty.
Science, the Most Highly Structured Metaphysics
Science is often placed at the opposite pole of metaphysics, under the pretext of stripping away idealistic delusions to identify reality. However, strictly speaking, I see science as the most elaborately designed form of metaphysics. This is because science operates using the metaphysical belief that “the world is regular and humans can understand it” as its engine.
Borrowing the insight of Immanuel Kant, I do not see the external world as it is; rather, I reconstruct it through the framework of “causality” designed by human intellect. In other words, it is not that nature possesses an inherent order, but that I am translating nature through the grammar of order. In this sense, scientific laws are less an objective reality and closer to the grandest “structural hypothesis” I have constructed to interpret the universe.
The Paradoxical Authority of Falsifiability
The point where science distinguishes itself from religion or superstition lies not in its solidity, but rather in its “vulnerability.” As Karl Popper emphasized, science thrives on “falsifiability.” The essence of science is not to ignore the fear that a law could be overturned tomorrow, but to keep that possibility open and constantly verify it.
Therefore, the certainty I feel does not come from having discovered “immutable truth,” but from a sense of statistical relief built up by “hypotheses that have not yet been proven wrong.” I know subconsciously that thousands of years of laws could be subverted overnight. I am simply gambling on that statistical improbability.
Faith in the Name of Reason
In the end, the reason I speak of operates only upon the groundless faith that “the universe is rational.” My belief in order is not a byproduct of scientific discovery, but the minimum price of admission required to even begin the scientific endeavor.
I believed that I had escaped metaphysics through science, but in reality, I may have confined myself within the grandest and most sophisticated fortress of metaphysics. Order is not the essence of the universe, but a desperate self-hypnosis uttered by a human being standing before the abyss of chaos. And it is thanks to that hypnosis that I am finally able to live through this day in peace.
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