This Book in PDF - Gary North

1THE UNNATURALNESS OFSCIENTIFIC NATURAL LAWIf the prospect of a dying universe causes us anguish, it does so onlYbecause we can forecast it, and we have as yet not the slightest idea whysuch forecasts are possible for us. A few figures scrawled on a piece ofpaper can describe the rate the universe expands, reveal what goes on insidea star, or predict where the planet Neptune will be on New lear~Day in theyear A.D. 25,000. Why? Why should nature, whether hostileor benz'gn, be in any way intelligible to us? All the mysteries ofsc£ence arebut palace guards to that mystery.Timothy Ferris!To a thoughtful humanist, this question boggles his mind: Howcan the mind of man grasp the nature of Nature? The Nobel Prizewinningphysicist Eugene Wigner once wrote a scholarly paper for aprofessional mathematics journal: "The Unreasonable Effectivenessof Mathematics in the Natural Sciences."2 Why is it, he asked, thatmathematics, the product of man's mental artistry, is so useful inpredicting the events of nature's independent environment? He hadno answer. 3There is an answer. It is not one which is acceptable to humanists.It is this: man is made in God~ image. God created the world, andthen He created man to exercise dominion over it (Gen. 1:26-28).1. Timothy Ferris, The Red Limit: The Searchfor the Edge ofthe Unz'verse (New York:William Morrow, 1977), pp. 217-18.2. Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the NaturalSciences," Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 13 (1960), pp. 1-14.3. He did not ask an even more important question: What produces the symmetryand coherence of mathematics in the mind of autonomous man? There is nohumanism-based answer for that question, either. See Vern Poythress, "A BiblicalView ofMathematics," in Gary North (ed.), Foundations ofChristian Scholarship: Essaysin the J-an Til Perspective (Vallecito, California: Ross House Books, 1976), ch. 9.13