A brute fact, in the way in which I read the term, is one which cannot be further explained: it just is. In the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, the definition "a terminus of a series of explanations which is not itself further explicable" is given. A brute fact is accordingly one that, though it may help explain other facts, is not itself susceptible of its own explanation.
For example, some physicists refer to the strength of the gravitational force in our universe as a brute fact, a just-so story that cannot be derived from other physical facts or laws. Science amounts to a hunt for systematic ways to explain what goes on in the world, accounts that can be validated experimentally and empirically, so when a scientist says X is a brute fact, what is being implied is that the hunt ends there, with X.
On the other hand, many scientists hold out hope that there is a Theory of Everything — perhaps some version of superstring theory — from which the strength of the universe's gravitational force just "falls out," as other supposed brute facts (e.g., Planck's constant describing the size of quanta in quantum mechanics) also would do.
But then the Theory of Everything would itself become a brute fact, lacking more basic explanation. Implicit in explanation-seeking science is the contradictory notion that there is an end to explicability, and it lies within the radius of the physical, material world.
At the same time, there is a preference for having everything explained as elegantly as possible, which means by making as few explanatory assumptions as one can. If two facts can be derived from one law as opposed to two separate laws, prefer the one law. This is Occam's Razor at work: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."
There may be a physical Theory of Everything which we will validate someday. It may account for a whole passel of cosmic constants — strength of gravity, Planck's constant, etc. — that (according to certain interpretations of the Anthropic Principle) make ours a universe "fine-tuned for life." Even so, wouldn't there be certain other brute facts it doesn't account for?
I'm thinking of the existence of consciousness, the moral order in the universe, and the sheer rational coherence of the cosmos.
That consciousness transcends the mere physical is a subject I took up at great length in Whither the "Magic" of Mind? and its predecessors. That the world has a set moral order was one of the topics of the item I posted immediately before this one, Ethos Optional?. I have taken up the subject of the rationality of the mind of God and of his created world in To Reason Is Divine and Free Will and Divine Coherence, among others. But I feel I have yet more to say about rationality here. The big question is, why should we not take the sheer rationality of the cosmos as a brute fact, and nothing more, rather than (as I myself take it) as a sign that there is a God?
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| Rebecca Stott's Ghostwalk |
Alchemists, like our scientists today, were trying to uncover nature's secrets, her patterns and processes, trying to work our how the five elements — earth, fire, water, space, air — transmuted into and out of each other under various astrological conditions to make up all forms of matter. They believed that everything, even those things that seemed inert, was actually teeming with spirits and that therefore everything could be raised or provoked into fuller form. They believed that all matter was on the move, moving into and out of everything else, waxing into or waning away from fullness so that lead fell short of gold, just as mortal man fell short of immortality. Under a certain pattern of stars and through fire, any matter (like lead) or spirit (like the human soul) might be "healed" or "killed" or "perfected" or "transmuted" into a greater state. A blossoming would take place. It had a rare beauty, this secret hybrid art made up of magic, chemistry, philosophy, hermetic thought, sacred geometry, and cosmology, a beauty in that passion to make things bloom into a fuller being.
A world in which the "philosopher's stone" could turn base metals to gold and the "elixir of life" could make us immortal would be a decidedly less rational, less coherent one that we actually live in. You might be able to flip a copper penny up through the right sort of air and have it come down a gold doubloon, or a perfected formula for Gatorade might ward off death forever.
In Christian thought, historically, such a world simply does not exist ... but not because it is inconceivable that it might exist. Ours might indeed have been an alchemical universe. But it isn't.
If our rational world were suddenly to become a world of magic, instead of what it is, such an upheaval would generally be thought of, in the long history of the thinking of the church, as the devil's work — for, in our rational world, God limits magic to his own miracles. Stott, for her part, mentions as being among these "the wine into blood, the burning bush, Lazarus raised from the dead" (p. 66). One might also mention Christ's resurrection.
Accordingly, the rationality of the world — the fact that alchemy is not really in the cards for us — would seem to be more than a brute fact. It needs to be taken seriously. It needs explanation. When a scientist skirts this issue by making of the world's rationality a just-so story — "It just so happens that there is no magic in the order of things" — it smacks of a willful blindness to other conceivable orders and to the Creator-Sustainer who holds them at bay.
Suppose I am right, and the rational order of things stands next to the existence of human consciousness and the existence of a moral order in the universe as not brute facts but facts deserving of further explanation. Occam's Razor would seem to dictate that explaining them all with recourse to one single assumption — that there is a God — makes perfect sense.
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