Timeline for Why is the universe governed by very few laws of high generality instead of lots of particular ones?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
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| Feb 23, 2021 at 21:25 | comment | added | Ron Inbar | That's a good question. I suspect that like many other questions it has something to do with the anthropic principle. That is, in a universe governed by many disparate laws it would be much more difficult for a conscious lifeform to make sense of its environment in a way that provides any evolutionary advantage, and therefore such lifeforms are extremely unlikely to evolve in the first place. | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 15:36 | answer | added | Fox Mulder | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 14:07 | comment | added | someone_else | @armand This is just a thought experiment. But if you demand consistency, we could consider classical mechanics (which we know is a self-consistent theory). What do you think about the edit I made to the question? | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 14:03 | history | edited | someone_else | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 26, 2021 at 23:50 | comment | added | armand | The universe you describe can be imagined but it raises lots of questions. For example, the law that makes orbits triangular must be applicable locally, in the space occupied by the orbit (otherwise, it would be chaotic, not triangular). So why is this law applicable in local space but not in other places? Where is the boundary? What happens when something crosses this boundary? Are those boundaries themselves determined by an higher order, universal law? etc... we can imagine many strange things but it's hard to stand scrutiny. | |
| Jan 26, 2021 at 23:19 | comment | added | user4894 | How do we know it's the universe governed by these laws rather than asking if these are perhaps the laws humans are able to formulate? Perhaps the universe is far more complicated, and humans are too simplistic. How can you rule that out? | |
| Jan 26, 2021 at 22:31 | answer | added | CriglCragl | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 26, 2021 at 21:27 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 6, 2021 at 3:08 | |||||
| Jan 26, 2021 at 21:02 | comment | added | Conifold | There is, on the other hand, a "zoo" of chemical, biological, psychological, etc., laws. Or even physical ones, for that matter, outside of fundamental physics. Heard of Darcy's law? Fundamental physics is simply the field where we collect more or less universal laws. | |
| Jan 26, 2021 at 19:29 | answer | added | niels nielsen | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 26, 2021 at 19:23 | history | edited | someone_else | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 26, 2021 at 19:05 | review | First posts | |||
| Jan 27, 2021 at 9:15 | |||||
| Jan 26, 2021 at 19:04 | history | asked | someone_else | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
