I think it’s more nuanced though. It’s more like theory helps us understand the underlying mechanisms of many phenomena, but the lack of precise measurements for initial conditions, together with the existence of chaos, makes robust long-term predictions out of reach.
I mean this idea is not new – Poincare had similar opinions in the 19th century iirc. The only thing the author said differently is that the universe is like an animal, and only in the last paragraph offhandedly for that matter.
tldr: physics is useless because chaos theory
I think it’s more nuanced though. It’s more like theory helps us understand the underlying mechanisms of many phenomena, but the lack of precise measurements for initial conditions, together with the existence of chaos, makes robust long-term predictions out of reach.
I mean this idea is not new – Poincare had similar opinions in the 19th century iirc. The only thing the author said differently is that the universe is like an animal, and only in the last paragraph offhandedly for that matter.