Chapter 27

As a reader of my writings, you will be taken on a fully encompassing intellectual joyride all over creation, with no (current) rhyme or reason. Some days you will see mini Bible studies, some days you will discover my views on addictive psychology, some days you will notice my viewpoints on philosophy and theology, some days you will find references to the general sciences (which I love), and some days you will find (well-intentioned) intellectual rants replete with many awesome new words (forcing you to open a dictionary and use your brain); though obviously sometimes you will find a combination of all the above. Now that you have been lovingly warned, let us continue our exquisite journey into the delightful realm of self-discovery.

The normological deductive model of scientific explanation explains a phenomenon or an event of any kind by showing that it is an instance of a universal law known to be true. The right answer to a question filtered through this model is not a generalization based on what happened in the past, but rather is a reference to a universal law known to be true, such that this event had to happen the way it did because this event is an instance of the class of events covered by that law. Is there anything as dependable or unfailing in its influence as a set of universal laws subject to this governing criterion?

This exposes us to truth with absolute certainty; as far as the epistemological limits to knowledge allow. Allow me to provide a clear example of what I’m talking about: What did Newton do in the 17th century? Through his Universal Law of Gravitation, he proved all objects attract each other with a force that’s directly proportional to a product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. What does this mean to you? Well, it explains the physics and mathematics behind something as simple as dropping a ball to the ground (which lands you into mysteries and complications you can hardly get to the end of). The ball did NOT fall to the ground simply because in past experiences - you just know that balls always fall to the ground. This would be an over-simplified generalization based on past experience, but does not follow the normological deductive model of scientific explanation. The true explanation will be that the mass of the ball and the mass of the Earth will attract each other with a force proportional to the product of the mass of the ball times the mass of the Earth and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the ball and the gravitational center of the Earth. So the answer to the question of why the ball falls to the Earth is: It had to, since this class of events is covered under known, proven scientific law.

This begs the next obvious question, what universal laws are known to be true, beyond all uncertainty, in the realm of psychology (the study of behavior)? Are there laws that govern human behavior that provide the same advanced level of predictability? What about the Spiritual component? What’s really going on here? (stay tuned, we’ll go deeper into this soon)