Science fiction on screen these days is less grandios, less important, less significant in some way. Maybe the brilliant screen writers are doing things like black mirror in the expanse and a, who knows, foundation might be there at some point. Emmet francis says, what defines something as a branch of physics? The same sorts of models that apply to basic physical systems also work quite well when describing higher level systems. Is it just that mathematical models and tools happen to carry over to other fields? Or is there something deeper that defines something as physics versus quantitative modelling? And maybe that's perfectly fine. An i don't really care whether we call it physics or not.