Many people view so-called discovery of natural laws as one of the determining factors behind our rapid advancement in understanding the natural world. But can the laws deliver the burden we place upon them, asks Daniel Joachim.

For more on the limits of science, join IAI LIVE: Fantasy, Faith and Physics this July 3^rd. Sabine Hossenfelder, Max Tegmark, Michio Kaku, Juan Maldacena, Lisa Randall, and Mary-Jane Rubenstein debate the role of fantasy and unproven belief in modern physics. Book now.

In “The Grand Design”, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow put forward the ambitious claim that the history of science can be summarized as “the long process of replacing the notion of the reign of gods with the concept of a universe that is governed by laws of nature.” [1]

What is meant by such a “law of nature”? Views widely differ, but some views of prominent contemporary physicists are worth mentioning. Sean Carroll proposes that “the way physics is known to work these days is in terms of patterns, unbreakable rules, laws of nature” [2] while Hawking & Mlodinow state a natural law is “a rule that is based upon an observed regularity and provides predictions that go beyond the immediate situations upon which it is based.” [3]