Próba argumentacji za ontyczną prostotą przyrody

Abstract

The problem of criterion of simplicity is one of the most complex problems in contemporary philosophy of science. Nearly thirty various types of simplicity are defined in methodological analyses, and increase of simplicity in a given sense yields often simultaneous decrease of simplicity in a different sense. Among these various types of simplicity the most important roles are played by gnoseological and ontic simplicity. The former concerns heuristic values of results of human knowledge expressed e.g. in scientific theories; the latter deals with the objective simplicity of physical structures existing independently of human observer. Gnoseological simplicity must not imply ontic simplicity, because economy of thinking can be a sufficient reason to accept gnoseological simplicity as a symptom of high heuristic values of appraised theories. Nonetheless, many authors accepting Occam’s razor in methodology accept also the scholastic adage „Natura simplicitatem amat”. Two essential properties of physical systems are taken into consideration in the paper in order to prove the thesis about ontic simplicity of Nature. One of them reveals in possibility of idealisation in description of physical systems. The idealisability of Nature permits to interpret properties of physical systems as results of chosen few components and to assume that contributions of other components are equal to zero. This assumption has obviously unrealistic character, but without it science practically could not exist. If the universe were not idealisable, in order to describe e.g. the Eddington’s universe containing 10 ⁷⁹ elements one ought to solve 2 ¹⁰ ⁷⁹ differential equations. The second important symptom of ontic simplicity is an anticasual character of physical systems. This property is revealed in the fact that among various theoretically possible states of a system exists a special class of events deciding of direction of diachronic evolution of the system. If this class did not exist, all imaginable situations could be possible, and the evolution of the systems could have purely accidental, chaotic, undetermined character. Due to this anti-accidentality, laws of Nature can be defined as well as prediction and retrodiction can be used in description of physical systems. These two properties are used in the paper to introduce partial definition – P₁ – of ontic simplicity of Nature. On account of impossibility to prove positively that Nature is simple in an absolute sense, an apagogie argument is formulated by the author to demonstrate that physical systems are ontically simple in the sense P₁. The argumentation presented here lefts open the problem of ontic simplicity conceived in a different, not P₁, sense.