The column is titled “Why the laws of physics don’t really exist.” The author explained that what we call the laws of physics are often just a mathematical description of some part of nature. This is true both for Newton’s laws of motion and for Einstein’s theories of relativity, the Schrödinger and Dirac equations, and so on. These are not laws per se, but precise and consistent ways of describing the reality that we see. This should be evident from the fact that these laws are not static: they evolve as our empirical knowledge of the universe accumulates.
Sarma also noted that there are about 86 billion neurons in the human brain. This is less than the number of stars in the Milky Way, which is only a tiny part of the known Universe. The universe seems almost infinite compared to the finite capacity of the human brain, leaving us perhaps little chance of finding out everything about it.
“As we learn more about nature, we can hone our descriptions of it, but it never ends – it’s like peeling an endless onion, the more we peel, the more there is to peel,” summed up Sarma.