A Simple Question...or 3!

[Aractus]

We don't "give it" laws, we discover the laws.

Well, my point is that a lof of things we consider "laws" may just be "features". A feature is something interesting that happens as a part of the process.

Why don't you explain to me why I should consider "hubble's law" a fundamental scientific law, especially in light of the fact that everybody now agrees quasars are "exempt" from the law (but they weren't when the law was "discovered")!

Newton imagined a linear universe, and his laws reflected how his worldview was.

As Stimbo mentioned, as far as we can tell physics is at play anywhere in this universe we care to look.

Go sub-atomic then and try and find the laws of chemistry working. Physics is at play, yes, but we have different sets of laws which affect different aspects of our universe, and are confined to specific frames of reference. "Higher level laws" collapse the features of the "lower level laws" that they're supposedly dependant on.

Remember we have to use a calculator to work out how objects are going to behave with each other in our physical models. The universe doesn't use a calculator, it doesn't perform calculations in order to work out what will happen and how it should happen, so that very model itself is fundamentally flawed. Just because it's the only way that we can understand it doesn't mean that it's the way it works. That's why we have the quantum uncertainty principle - it's there to convert something that is not calculable into something that is for our purposes.

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Okay, while it is true that physicists invented the concept of physics in the sense of definable laws, it is not true to say that we then imposed them upon the Universe. It's rather like saying that there was no colour blue in the Universe before we invented a word for it.

Let's stretch your example a little. The universe doesn't have "primary colours". Just because you can mix magenta paint with yellow paint and produce red doesn't mean that's how the universe does it. When I was a kid I was taught that red is a primary colour, and I was also taught specifically that you can't make blue paint from other colours. I now know that you make blue paint by mixing cyan and magenta. We totally invented the concept of primary colours to make life easier for ourselves, even though not only does it totally not represent the way that the real world works, it also prevents us from utilizing the full visible colour spectrum when we use what we call "primary colours".