Suppose the table in your living room began to rise in the air at regular intervals, once every half hour, making a few turns around its axis and descending back down.
Of course, we would like to find an explanation for this phenomenon. If someone were to say, “What’s the problem? The table is moving because of a special and new law of nature that can be formulated, according to which your table rises every half hour, does a few rounds, and goes back down. Let’s give it a scientific name and put it in the laws of physics.” Would that satisfy us?
Certainly not, since this law only describes the movement of the table and allows it to be anticipated; it does not explain what moves the table. The same is true of the motions of matter throughout the universe, which the laws of physics only describe but can’t explain. How, then, can the motion of matter be explained? Physics tells us that everything moves. EVERYTHING! Even inanimate objects. Their movements are on the molecular level, so we don’t see them and would probably be terrified if we saw them actually moving, but they move.
We are told that the laws of nature define their movements. But they don’t explain why. They don’t give us a reason. We just blindly accept the answer, “it’s the law of physics.” So why do we just believe it, and what does that answer actually mean?
