Thomson, Iain. Review of Santiago Zabala, THE REMAINS OF BEING. NDPR (October 2010).

Zabala, Santiago.  The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology after Metaphysics.  New York: Columbia UP, 2009.

Postmodernism isn't what it used to be. As a meaningful philosophical movement (rather than a vague term of disparagement), "postmodernism" primarily designated a diverse series of Heidegger-inspired attempts to situate and guide our late-modern historical age by uncovering and transcending its most destructive metaphysical presuppositions. Ironically, however, the only major contemporary philosophers still willing to call themselves "postmodernists" have renounced that "utopian" quest for a philosophical passage beyond modernity. From their perspective, the definitive Heideggerian hope for a "postmodern" understanding of being looks like a retro-futuristic fantasy, a quaint image of what the future might have been, which (like the Jetsons or Steampunk) has now been rendered obsolete. Unfortunately, when self-described "postmodernists" abandon the attempt to identify and transcend the distinctive problems of modernity, they empty the philosophical movement of its primary meaning and purpose, allowing the label to degenerate into a vague shorthand many philosophers use merely to deride and dismiss "that-relativistic-and-trendy-nonsense-they-read-in-other-humanities-departments-instead-of-studying-real-philosophy."

The philosophers who best fit this paradoxical description -- "postmodernists" who no longer seek to get beyond modernity -- are Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo. One of the two leading Italian Heideggerians (Heideggerianism being the philosophical mainstream in Italy), Vattimo is probably most famous for being an openly gay and Catholic member of the European Parliament. But Vattimo's philosophical work is no less incongruous: Vattimo seeks to show that his own anti-foundationalist, post-Heideggerian hermeneutics (which he proudly calls "weak thought" and even "nihilism") provides the strongest possible foundation for a liberal-democratic political order. As a political philosophy, Vattimo's provocative work is surprisingly convincing and so deserves more critical attention in the English-speaking world. As an interpretation of Heidegger, however, Vattimo's hermeneutics suffer from a serious problem. The issue is complicated, but to put it simply: Vattimo ends up treating the "nihilistic," Nietzschean position Heidegger opposes (namely, the reduction of being to nothing but becoming) as if it were Heidegger's own view and one we should all adopt (thereby becoming proud "nihilists" ourselves).

Santiago Zabala appropriates and extends Vattimo's Nietzschean interpretation of Heidegger in his new book, The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology after Metaphysics. That Zabala takes Vattimo's view as his own starting point is not surprising; Zabala is Vattimo's student, occasional co-author, and frequent editor. Indeed, as the editor of such translations of Vattimo's work as Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law (2004), The Future of Religion (a dialogue with Vattimo and Rorty, 2007), and Art's Claim to Truth (2008); as well as of secondary volumes on Vattimo such as Weakening Philosophy (2009) and Consequences of Hermeneutics (with Jeff Malpas, 2010), Zabala has already become a leading exponent of Vattimo's thought. The Remains of Being is a relatively small book (the main text takes up only 125 5x7 inch pages), but it is far from introductory: Zabala rarely explains technical terminology, defends his views, or criticizes the views of others. The Remains of Being remains quite lively, nonetheless, for it is written in an energetic and dynamic style, with all the apparent conviction of an apostle of a new philosophical movement and with the excesses typical of such philosophical evangelism.

Zabala's book is a good example of the "Whig history" Rorty praised and practiced, that is, a narrative told so as to empower the narrator and "place rival canons" (as Rorty put it), in Zabala's case by trying to co-opt the views of other schools of post-Heideggerian philosophy. The Remains of Being is incredibly ambitious in this respect. For example, Zabala claims that the particular hermeneutic approach he advocates ("the ontology of remnants") "is the only way to philosophize" (16, my emphasis). Similarly, he holds that:

In the globalized world, where rapid ecological and political changes have been implemented by . . . scientific applications, in order to increase social divisions that favored two world wars (today we call them oil wars), the problem of Being becomes essential, because it is the only way to seek the ground of these issues. (34, my emphasis)

Here Zabala adopts a much simplified version of Heidegger's view that the most pressing problems facing the contemporary world stem from the "forgetting of being." Because Zabala does not seem to understand the details of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics as ontotheology, however, he goes so far as to call for us "to overthrow the metaphysical and scientific traditions that have concealed the ontological nature of Being in favor of the ontic nature of beings" (39, my emphasis). Zabala thinks "science . . . is involved in the abandonment of Being" (33) because "The scientist . . . works out solutions to problems that are objectified, timeless entities" (44). That is not Heidegger's view, however, and makes little sense of such leading scientific endeavors as the search at CERN for Higgs boson particles (theorized to last for only a small fraction of a second, and so hardly "timeless entities"). Heidegger's view is that physics has taken over the metaphysical tradition's ontotheological quest to secure both the innermost core and the outermost horizon of intelligibility. (The work at CERN, when coupled with other major scientific endeavors such as the Hubble space telescope, reinforces Heidegger's view of the persistence of ontotheology. Even Stephen Hawking's recent charge that "philosophy is dead" unintentionally acknowledges that physics and cosmology have adopted metaphysics' traditional ontotheological role.) Zabala's anti-scientific view rests on a misunderstanding of Heidegger.[4]

To be fair, Zabala warns readers that his "interpretation of these philosophers, including and most of all Heidegger, does not pretend to be a faithful interpretation of their thought" (xv). According to Zabala's simplified version of Heidegger's critique of metaphysics, our "rational way of looking at the world . . . has made unavoidable the alienated, unhoused, persistently violent state of modern technological human beings" (34). The biggest surprise here is that for Zabala (his revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding), "overthrowing" the metaphysical tradition allegedly responsible for alienation, homelessness, and violence does not mean "overcoming" it but, instead, "learning to live with it" (45)! As Zabala succinctly puts it: "overcoming metaphysics from within" means "recognizing that it cannot completely be overcome" (22). This paradoxical idea is at the heart of Zabala's The Remains of Being, and it is something Zabala takes over from Vattimo. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21649.

Romano, Carlin. "Cosmology, Cambridge Style: Wittgenstein, Toulmin, and Hawking." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION September 26, 2010.

In his new book, Hawking, the celebrated author of A Brief History of Time (Bantam, 1988), declares on the first page that "philosophy is dead" because it "has not kept up" with science, which alone can explain the universe. "It is not necessary to invoke God," the authors write, "to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." Hawking sound-bited the hard stuff for interviewers: "Science makes God unnecessary," he told Good Morning America. Something simply came out of nothing.

If you've followed the science-religion debate in recent times, there's nothing new about such claims. Many scientists take Hawking's side, some do not. Almost everyone agrees that, as Hawking told ABC News, "One can't prove that God doesn't exist." The Templeton Foundation, which specializes in prodding believers and nonbelievers to discuss such things in civilized ways, has published all sorts of booklets, like "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?," in which some eminent scientists answer "Yes" and others answer "No."

Why, then, the uproar? Largely because Hawking has been anointed by the media as possibly "the smartest man in the world" (ABC News) and the "most revered scientist since Einstein" (The New York Times)—a genius, and so on. A genius, presumably, must be right about everything. Especially if he managed to sell nine million copies of a book.

Hawking's latest claims also sparked attention because A Brief History of Time ended with his observation that, if we could achieve a unified theory in physics, we would "know the mind of God." While Hawking's fellow atheists took that coda as a play on Einstein's earlier use of the phrase, many believers chose to read it as open-mindedness toward a possible creator, making this new book a sharp U-turn.

The ironic part of the current media tizzy is that philosophical Cambridge—that lesser-known slice of the university historically eclipsed by the Nobel accomplishments of its physicists—long ago showed why Hawking's orotund pronouncements about God are, to be charitable, simplistic. In fact, it is Cambridge's greatest contributors to 20th-century philosophy—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and his most trenchant disciple, the Cambridge-trained physicist and philosopher of science Stephen Toulmin (1922-2009)—who inoculated us against the naïve view that science shows God does not exist and is irrelevant to cosmology.

Before one gets edgy over Hawking's latest ex cathedra squawk, then, consider a thumbnail version of what Wittgenstein and Toulmin taught us about religion, science, and cosmology. Their message to Hawking? Scientists eager to delete God exceed their job description. . . .

Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/article/Cosmology-Cambridge-Style-/124568.

Pub: SPECULATIONS 1 (2010).

Table of Contents:

Editorial – Paul Ennis

Articles:

• "Science-Laden Theory: Outlines of an Unsettled Alliance" – Fabio Gironi
• "Thinking Against Nature: Nature, Ideation, and Realism between Lovecraft and Schelling" – Ben Woodard
• "To Exist Is To Change: A Friendly Disagreement With Graham Harman On Why Things Happen" – Michael Austin
• Interviews with Graham Harman, Jane Bennett, Tim Morton, Ian Bogost, Levi Bryant and Paul Ennis – Petter Gratton

Position Papers:

• "Nomological Disputation: Alain Badiou and Graham Harman on Objects" – Nathan Coombs
• "Response to Nathan Coombs" – Graham Harman
• "Networkologies: A Manifesto, Section I" – Christopher Vitale

Book Reviews:

• Deleuze/Guattari & Ecology, edited by Bernd Herzogenrath – Adrian Ivakhiv
• The Ecological Thought by Tim Morton – Petter Gratton with a response by Tim Morton
• After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion edited by Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler – Austin Smidt

Download the essays here: http://www.publicpraxis.com/speculations/.

Transcendental Realism Workshop, Department of Philosophy, University of Warwick, May 11, 2010.

The purpose of the workshop is to examine the arguments underlying the increasing push towards realism in parts of modern continental philosophy, along with approaches that bridge the analytic/continental divide, and to assess the possibility of transcendental approaches to realism within this context. Particular themes that we be focused upon include:- - The arguments of Quentin Meillassoux, and the possibility of transcendental responses to the problems he raises. - The relation between epistemology and ontology. - The relation between philosophy and the natural sciences. Speakers:

• Ray Brassier (Philosophy, American University of Beirut) - 'Kant and Sellars: Nominalism, Realism, Naturalism'
• James Trafford (Philosophy, Unaffiliated) - 'Follow the Evidence: Realism, Epistemology, Semantics'
• Reid Kotlas (Philosophy Grad Student, Dundee) - 'From Transcendental to Abstract Realism: Epistemology after Marx'
• Nick Srnicek (Politics PhD Student, LSE) - 'Extending Cognition: Bridging the Gap between Actor-Network Theory and Scientific Realism'
• Tom O'Shea (Philosophy PhD Student, Sheffield) - 'On the Very Idea of Correlationism'
• Pete Wolfendale (Philosophy PhD Student, Warwick) - 'Objectivity, Reality, and the In-Itself: from Deflationary to Transcendental Realism'

For further information, email pete.wolfendale@gmail.com.

Bryant, Levi R. Review of David Couzens Hoy's THE TIME OF OUR LIVES. NDPR (September 2009).

Hoy, David Couzens. The Time of Our Lives: a Critical History of Temporality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. If one were to cite one set of issues that distinguishes the Continental philosophy of the last century from prior philosophy, a red thread uniting movements as disparate as Frankfurt school critical theory, German and French phenomenology, and French post-structuralism, it would be no exaggeration to cite the focus of these philosophical movements on issues revolving around time and temporality. To be sure, Aristotle had reflected on the nature of time in his Physics, just as Augustine presented a profound meditation on the nature of time in his Confessions. Moreover, attempts to conceptualize the nature of time have never been absent in the history of philosophy. However, never before had questions of time been given the centrality, the pride of place, they took on in the Continental philosophy of the last century. Here questions of time were no longer treated as an ancillary issue, belonging perhaps to philosophical physics. To the contrary, what was new in the Continental thought of the last century was a sense that questions of time and temporality lay at the heart of questions of ontology, epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political theory. The twentieth-century philosophical literature surrounding questions of time and temporality is vast, eclectic, complicated, and difficult. It is hard to see, for example, what might unite the historical meditations of quasi critical theorists such as Walter Benjamin with the phenomenological investigations of temporality carried out by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. It is for this reason that David Couzens Hoy's The Time of Our Lives is such a welcome contribution to the philosophical literature surrounding questions of temporality. Written in a lively and exceptionally clear style, Hoy's book is wide ranging, lucidly discussing the theories of time and temporality developed by Kant, Nietzsche, Bergson, James, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu, Derrida, Deleuze, Benjamin, and Žižek. Hoy successfully manages to put these thinkers, so diverse in their methodologies and preoccupations, in dialogue with one another, staging a theater of ideas revolving around the role that temporality plays in our self-relation, the sense of our lives, and questions of politics and ethics. However, it would be a mistake to imagine that his book is simply a catalogue of theories of temporality, presenting the reader with a convenient series of commentaries on what this or that thinker has said about temporality. Hoy's book, the first volume of a history of consciousness, is an excellent resource for the student or scholar seeking some orientation within the bewildering labyrinth of Continental thought surrounding questions of temporality. This first volume deals with time and time-consciousness; the second will deal with self-consciousness. Hoy's provocative thesis, contra Kant and Husserl, is that temporality precedes the self-relation of self-consciousness, and is therefore prior to the self and mind. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17426.

Interview with Santiago Zabala (Columbia UP).

Zabala, Santiago. The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology after Metaphysics. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. In sum, the goal of this book is to expose the remains of Being after Heidegger’s destruction of metaphysics in contemporary philosophy. The greatest achievements of this destruction are, first, the revelation that Being has always been described as a present object in its presentness and, second, the realization that it is not possible to definitively overcome this objective interpretation without falling back into another descriptive interpretation. In this condition, where metaphysics cannot be “überwinden,” (overcome, meaning a complete abandonment of the problem) but can only be “verwinden” (surpassed, alluding to the way one surpasses a major disappointment not by forgetting it but by coming to terms with it) it is necessary to start interpreting Being through its remains, which is a concept that maintains metaphysics in such a way to also overcome it. . . . Read the full interview here: http://cup.columbia.edu/static/zabala-interview-the-remains-of-being.

"21st Century Materialism," Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, Croatia, June 20-21, 2009.

Photos:

• 21st century materialism Flickr-set [photos taken by Tom Medak]

Audio:

• Miran Božovič’s talk [82 mb, mp3]
• Graham Harman’s talk [100 mb, mp3]
• Roundtable Day #1 [86 mb, mp3 > participating: Brown, Božovič, Hallward, Harman, Hägglund and others]
• Martin Hägglund’s talk [100 mb, mp3 ]
• Peter Hallward’s talk [92 mb, mp3 ]

Visit the conference page here: http://materialism.mi2.hr/.

Forthcoming: Bryant, Levi, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, eds. THE SPECULATIVE TURN: CONTINENTAL MATERIALISM AND REALISM. Sydney: Re.Press, 2010.

Description: Continental philosophy has entered a new period of ferment. The long deconstructionist era was followed with a period dominated by Deleuze, which has in turn evolved into a new situation still difficult to define. However, one common thread running through the new brand of continental positions is a renewed attention to materialist and realist options in philosophy. Among the current giants of this generation, this new focus takes numerous different and opposed forms. It might be hard to find many shared positions in the writings of Badiou, DeLanda, Laruelle, Latour, Stengers, and Zizek, but what is missing from their positions is an obsession with the critique of written texts. All of them elaborate a positive ontology, despite the incompatibility of their results. Meanwhile, the new generation of continental thinkers is pushing these trends still further, as seen in currents ranging from transcendental materialism to the London-based speculative realism movement to new revivals of Derrida. As indicated by the title The Speculative Turn, the new currents of continental philosophy depart from the text-centered hermeneutic models of the past and engage in daring speculations about the nature of reality itself. This anthology assembles authors, of several generations and numerous nationalities, who will be at the center of debate in continental philosophy for decades to come. Essays by: Alain Badiou Ray Brassier Nathan Brown Levi Bryant Gabriel Catren Manuel DeLanda Iain Hamilton Grant Martin Hägglund Peter Hallward Graham Harman Adrian Johnston Francois Laruelle Bruno Latour Quentin Meillassoux Nicole Pepperell Nick Srnicek Isabelle Stengers Alberto Toscano Slavoj Žižek. Further information may be found here: http://www.re-press.org/content/view/64/40/.

Cfp: "Immanence and Materialism," Queen Mary College, University of London, June 23, 2009.

Keynote Speakers: Professor James Williams (University of Dundee) Dr Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut) Dr Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London) The concepts of immanence and materialism are becoming increasingly important in political philosophy. This conference seeks to analyse the connections between these two concepts and to examine the consequences for political thought. It is possible, as Giorgio Agamben has done, to make a distinction within modern philosophy between a line of transcendence (Kant, Husserl, Levinas, Derrida) and a line of immanence (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze, Foucault). If we follow this distinction, then the 'line of immanence' might include Spinozist interpretations of Marx, Althusser's aleatory materialism, and Deleuze's superior empiricism. But what is the value of this work and is it useful to distinguish it from 'transcendent' philosophies? Distinctions between materialism and idealism are equally complex: Derrida, for example, might as easily be classed a materialist as an idealist. And where can we place more recent work like the critiques of Deleuze by Badiou and Zizek, or Meillassoux's speculative materialism? Papers may wish to consider the following questions: What is materialist philosophy? How can it be distinguished from idealist philosophy, and is it useful to do so? Are all philosophies of immanence necessarily materialist? Is it legitimate or useful to make a clear distinction between philosophies of immanence and philosophies of transcendence? How have the concepts of immanence and materialism traditionally been conceived within political philosophy? What, if any, are the political consequences of pursuing a philosophy of immanence? Paper titles and a 300-word abstract should be sent by Friday 22 May, 2009 to Simon Choat at s.j.choat@qmul.ac.uk, Department of Politics, Queen Mary College, University of London.

"Speculative Materialism / Speculative Realism," Philosophy Research Unity, University of the West of England, April 24, 2009.

Participants: Ray Brassier (American University of Beirut), Iain Hamilton Grant (University of the West of England), Graham Harman (American University in Cairo), Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths, University of London) with a paper by Quentin Meillassoux (Ecole Normale Supérieure) The first 'Speculative Realism' workshop at Goldsmiths College, London, in 2007 sparked considerable interest and debate in contemporary European philosophy circles. This second workshop shall pursue some of the fundamental issues that emerged out of the first, principal among them the relation of speculative philosophy to materialist metaphysics. Materialism emerges at two key yet divergent junctures: firstly at the physicalist level, raising the problems of reduction and epistemic change, and in consequence, confronting the viability of any kind of speculative philosophy. The second juncture concerns the practically oriented materialism that constrains its ontologies accordingly. Yet to the reductionist programme apparently mandated by materialism, it is possible to oppose an ontologically inflationary account; this same position can equally give rise to a consistent account of causality that, if not an immaterialism, does not rest on a material base. Similarly, while materialists adhere to reductionist research programmes, such programmes are themselves highly speculative, leading therefore to the question whether materialism’s epistemic and ontological problems may more consistently be addressed by overtly speculative means. Finally, does a problematical use of materialism as a politically operative concept entail a rejection or an augmentation of speculative philosophy? None of the contributors to this second International Workshop on speculative philosophy and materialism share a position on these problems; yet the necessity that they be confronted is incontrovertible. This workshop therefore provides a focus for the exercise of speculative philosophy, rather than for metaphilosophical commentary on it. Further information may be found here: http://www.uwe.ac.uk/hlss/courses/philosophy/events/2009-04_spec_conference.shtml.

Albert, David Z., and Rivka Galchen. "Was Einstein Wrong? A Quantum Threat to Special Relativity." SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN February 18, 2009.

Our intuition, going back forever, is that to move, say, a rock, one has to touch that rock, or touch a stick that touches the rock, or give an order that travels via vibrations through the air to the ear of a man with a stick that can then push the rock—or some such sequence. This intuition, more generally, is that things can only directly affect other things that are right next to them. If A affects B without being right next to it, then the effect in question must be indirect—the effect in question must be something that gets transmitted by means of a chain of events in which each event brings about the next one directly, in a manner that smoothly spans the distance from A to B. Every time we think we can come up with an exception to this intuition—say, flipping a switch that turns on city street lights (but then we realize that this happens through wires) or listening to a BBC radio broadcast (but then we realize that radio waves propagate through the air)—it turns out that we have not, in fact, thought of an exception. Not, that is, in our everyday experience of the world. We term this intuition "locality." Quantum mechanics has upended many an intuition, but none deeper than this one. And this particular upending carries with it a threat, as yet unresolved, to special relativity—a foundation stone of our 21st-century physics. . . . Read the rest there: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=was-einstein-wrong-about-relativity&print=true.

Bostridge, Ian. "Timing is Everything." STANDPOINT ONLINE (January 2009).

The subjectivity of our experience of time is widely acknowledged. As we get older, time seems to go faster - or is it that we seem to move faster in time? The spatial metaphors we use are confused and confusing. The theories to explain this change range from the physiological (the body cools as we age) to the arithmetical (each moment is a smaller proportion of a lengthening lifespan). If time is so mutable, so much a matter of the ebb and flow of consciousness, is it in fact illusory? The commonsense view has long been that of classical science. Isaac Newton contrasted "absolute, true, and mathematical time" which "in and of itself and of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly and by another name is called duration" with what he called "relative, apparent and common time". This is the view he bequeathed to the industrial age, the world of clocks, measurement and effective time management, but one which was exploded in its metaphysical aspects by Einstein's musings on relative motion and the speed of light, by the space-time continuum, and the uncertainties of quantum mechanics. Time is the stuff of music: music manipulates our experience of time; it plays with the rhythm of experience; it stretches and complicates our relationship to the passing of time. If the world of physics is a space-time continuum, music is a pitch-time continuum. We use spatial metaphors to express our experience of frequency - notes are higher and lower, something expressed formally in staff notation, and deeply inscribed in our experience of music as performers and listeners. A large interval between two notes is a gulf to be stretched over. The quintessential musical form, melody, as it moves up and down in pitch space, over time, is a sort of quasi-miraculous bridging of the gap between the abandoned past, the ungraspable present and the as-yet-to-be-achieved, utterly unreal future. We grasp it and, as we do so, time is attended to and made palpable and affective. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/723/full.

Overbye, Dennis. "Laws of Nature, Source Unknown." NEW YORK TIMES December 18, 2007.

Yes, it’s a lawful universe. But what kind of laws are these, anyway, that might be inscribed on a T-shirt but apparently not on any stone tablet that we have ever been able to find? Are they merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don’t know and that most scientists don’t seem to know or care where they come from? Apparently it does matter, judging from the reaction to a recent article by Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and author of popular science books, on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. Dr. Davies asserted in the article that science, not unlike religion, rested on faith, not in God but in the idea of an orderly universe. Without that presumption a scientist could not function. His argument provoked an avalanche of blog commentary, articles on Edge.org and letters to The Times, pointing out that the order we perceive in nature has been explored and tested for more than 2,000 years by observation and experimentation. That order is precisely the hypothesis that the scientific enterprise is engaged in testing. David J. Gross, director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Calif., and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, told me in an e-mail message, “I have more confidence in the methods of science, based on the amazing record of science and its ability over the centuries to answer unanswerable questions, than I do in the methods of faith (what are they?).” Reached by e-mail, Dr. Davies acknowledged that his mailbox was “overflowing with vitriol,” but said he had been misunderstood. What he had wanted to challenge, he said, was not the existence of laws, but the conventional thinking about their source. There is in fact a kind of chicken-and-egg problem with the universe and its laws. Which “came” first — the laws or the universe? . . .