We Know All the Laws Underlying Everyday Phenomena

....and always have.

Sean Carroll is only responsible for the first part of that claim.

His claim is falsifiable, and he supplies a standard:

What would be a refutation of my claim that we understand the laws underlying everyday phenomena? Easy: point to just one example of an everyday phenomenon that provides evidence of “new physics” beyond the laws we know. Something directly visible that requires a violation of general relativity or the Standard Model. That’s all it would take, but there aren’t any such phenomena.


Some point out that we have heard this story before, in the 1890s, say. Sean has a counter.

A century ago, that would have been incredibly easy to do; the world of Newtonian mechanics plus Maxwell’s equations wasn’t able to account for why the Sun shines, or why tables are solid. Now we do understand how to account for those things in terms of known laws of physics.


A century ago yes, but roll the wayback machine for another two or three decades and I say not. Remember, Sean's standard was something providing evidence of new physics beyond what was understood. In 1880, there was no reason to doubt the efficacy of Newton and Maxwell to understand the radiation of the Sun or the stability of matter - those things were not fully understood, but the reasons further explanation was needed were hardly evident.

That said, I'm pretty sure that Sean is right, just not quite so sure as he is.

For sure, there are plenty of things now in everyday life that aren't explicable with Newtonian physics, but that's mostly because everyday has expanded so much, and now includes transistors, gps, and nuclear medicine.

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