WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

[I]f we want to know how it got to be that way, we have to apply the laws of physics to the Universe, and follow the evolution of the physical systems that we know exist. For instance:

We know how gravitation works; we have the laws of General Relativity that govern it, so wherever you have mass or energy, you have the phenomenon of gravitation.

We know how electromagnetism works; wherever you have an electrically charged object, whether moving or at rest, or an electromagnetic wave (i.e., a photon), the electromagnetic force comes into play.

We know how the nuclear forces work, including how quarks and gluons bind together to make protons and neutrons, how protons and neutrons bind together to make atomic nuclei, and how unstable nuclei (as well as other combinations of quarks and/or antiquarks besides protons and neutrons) radioactively decay.

And we know how to time-evolve any physical system that we start off with.

Put simply, if you give a physicist a set of initial conditions that describe your system, they can write down equations that govern the evolution of that system, and can tell you -- to the limits of the uncertainty and indeterminism inherent to nature -- what the outcome (or probabilistic set of outcomes) of that system will be at any point in the future...

Tweet   @brothersjudd