Re: Fundamental problems in Physics

[Howard Pattee <***>]

John,
My usage of physical laws, as I explained to Tim, refers to nature itself 
(left side of modeling diagram). I agree with you that physicists do not 
know or have only partial context-dependent models (right side of modeling 
diagram) for all these laws, but physicists believe (have faith) that 
nature herself is inherently lawful, which is what I meant by my statement.

Howard

At 05:05 PM 12/14/04 -0700, John K wrote:
> Judith, Howard, et al.,
>
> I'd like to suggest that the only difficulty with these statements is 
> their absoluteness. That is what is irritating on the other side. What 
> does "completely general" mean as opposed to perhaps "general for certain 
> contexts."  I do not believe, for example, that spacetime itself  is 
> completely general outside the known universe. And physics does speculate 
> about other universes, quite seriously. Hence all the general dynamical 
> laws based on space and time are not "completely general." All Rosen was 
> saying was that the generality is always context dependent.