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...For 400 years, a deep dualism has lain at the heart of science. On the one hand the laws of physics are usually considered universal, absolute and eternal: for example, a force of 2 newtons acting on a 2-kilogram mass will cause it to accelerate by 1 metre per second per second, wherever and whenever in the universe the force is applied.
On the other hand, there is another factor in our description of the physical world: its states. These are not fixed in time. All the states of a physical system - whether we are talking about a hydrogen atom, a box full of gas or the recorded prices on the London stock market - are continually moving and changing in a variety of ways.
In our descriptions of how physical systems behave, these states are as important as the laws. After all, the laws act on the states to predict how the system will behave. A law without a state is like a traffic rule in a world with no cars: it doesn't have any application.
What the new paradigm suggests is that the laws of physics and the states of the real world might be interwoven at the deepest level. In other words, the laws of physics do not sit, immutable, above the real world, but are affected by it. “Any calculation requiring more than 10120 bits is simply a fantasy”
That sounds almost heretical, but some physicists - most notably John Wheeler - have long speculated that the laws of physics might not be fixed "from everlasting to everlasting", to use his quaint expression. Most cosmologists treat the laws of physics as "given", transcending the physical universe. Wheeler, however, insisted the laws are "mutable" and in some manner "congeal" into their present form as the universe expands from an initial infinitely dense state. In other words, the laws of physics might emerge continuously from the ferment of the hot big bang....
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Simon
