McClintock, Peter V. E. (2017) The foundations of physical law : Review of a book of the same title by Peter Rowlands. Contemporary Physics, 58 (1). pp. 107-108. ISSN 0010-7514
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Abstract
Many physicists enter the profession because, often as children, they felt a burning curiosity about the world. They wanted to know why material objects behave as they do, what they are made of, and where everything came from. So they were drawn inexorably towards physics, the most basic science, as the best place to seek answers. They will have found, however, that the answers only go just so far. Physics has constructed a world picture, a model of reality, that is based on well-established fundamental scientific laws. If one takes the latter as given then, at least in a broad-brush kind of way, one has an explanation of everything. But where do the laws themselves come from? This is the question that Peter Rowlands confronts directly in his interesting new book.