Mathematics and the Universe

[Purple Rabbit]

Let's try and clarify the term 'laws' of physics. Earlier it was said they are not 'laws' in the sense that we usually use the term. I understand it to mean this. Correct me if I'm wrong:

These 'laws' or 'forces' are 'set' or constrained in some way so that they don't fluctuate- hence why we can understand/explain them via mathematical equations (and hence why we are in existence and pondering them). It's hard to visualise or comprehend even one of these laws, being able to stay 'fixed'. If we think of a constant temperature via our central heating, there are controls that regulate the temperature and we manipulate the heating system to maintain the temperature we require. (The temperature is measured via numbers). In nature, heat fluctuates depending on the weather conditions than vary all the time. Why do these laws NOT fluctuate if all of nature and the universe is random, etc? This is the 'crux' of the matter for me that I am trying to understand with my limited knowledge of physics and maths.

Let's have a shot at this.

A law of nature basically is a pattern observed to always hold in nature. The pattern can be about anything, the way crystals of sulphur grow, the ratio between heat produced and work done, that a moving magnet induces an electric current and that vice versa an electric current induces magnetism. Laws of nature can be about things that keep constant (for example the energy of a closed system) or about things that change (the force of gravity between to massess as they move away from each other, or the apparant brightness of a star at different distances from it).

With the laws of nature it is possible to predict what happens in a predefined situation. For example it is possible to predict fairly accurately the trajectory of a space probe when you know how gravity acts on the probe.

Above I said that laws of nature always hold. But many laws established by observation do not live up to that criterion, they depend on all kinds of other factors. In general though, scientists refer to the immutable princples/patterns when they talk about the laws of nature. For instance that the force of gravity between any two objects with mass is inversely squared to the distance of these two objects. These laws do not require someone pulling levers and pushing buttons. They are what they are and science studies how they are. Also science tries to relate all these laws to each other. What if the two objects are magnets? Does that affect the force of gravity? And what if the objects spin? By doing all this cross checking a framework of interwoven laws of nature is wrought. Mind boggling patterns and symmetries have thus been found: the equivalence of matter and energy as expressed by Einstein's E=mc^2. The dualistic nature of elementary particles as particles and as waves. Some of these frameworks have been given names (rather sober ones like the Standard Model or fancy ones like Quantum Chromodynamics).

The framework of immutable rules (about the way things vary or don't vary in nature) as far as we know hold in every part of the universe. The universe may look like chaos with exploding stars, dust clouds, planets with life on it, hot boliing geysers, volcanos, the weather and tidal waves. But all this 'chaos' isn't what it seems, every single law of the framework is obeyed by this chaos. Not a single atom in a cloud is free from the gravitational pull of the earth, not a single foton in the inside of the sun is free from the laws of quatum mechanics. All the variation and chaos and change is a result of these patterns we call the laws of nature.

So far science has found four fundamental forces in nature: gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force. Although some speculation is involved, it is expected from the nature of these forces at high energies that they somewhere along the energy scale merge into one mother of all forces. A force that existed at the beginning of the big bang.