The Foundation of Physics

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The most challenging thing i've found myself e tackling so far is really the er. So showing that there is a kind of advantage in appealing to these principles, that constructor theory has a which can lead us to somehow supplement the donomical laws as we currently know them. This is more like an challenge in finding specific problems where this approach makes a difference, rather than in explaining why the problems are important.

Traditional physics works within the “Laplacian paradigm”: you give me the state of the universe (or some closed system), some equations of motion, then I use those equations to evolve the system through time. Constructor theory proposes an alternative paradigm: to think of physical systems in terms of counterfactuals — the set of rules governing what can and cannot happen. Originally proposed by David Deutsch, constructor theory has been developed by today’s guest, Chiara Marletto, and others. It might shed new light on quantum gravity and fundamental physics, as well as having applications to higher-level processes of thermodynamics and biology.

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Chiara Marletto received her DPhil in physics from the University of Oxford. She is currently a research fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Her new book is The Science of Can and Can’t: A Physicist’s Journey Through the Land of Counterfactuals.

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