Lifeboat Foundation

Of all the sciences, physics has been seen as the key to understanding everything. As Feynman said, “physics is the fundamental science.” But in this article, one of the world’s leading physicists, George F. R. Ellis, who collaborated with Stephen Hawking in work on spacetime’s geometry, argues that much of reality extends far beyond physics. Both complex objects like biological organisms and abstract entities like the rules of chess influence the world in ways that cannot be predicted by studying their simple physical constituents. Science, Ellis insists, is far richer than any single framework can ever capture.

1. Abstract Causation

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