Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws,' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that while science seeks to understand the laws of nature, there may always be fundamental truths that remain beyond scientific explanation.
Paul Davies highlights the limitations of scientific inquiry when it comes to the ultimate truths of the universe. He argues that while cosmologists strive to derive everyday laws from deeper 'superlaws', these foundational principles may themselves be inexplicable and must be accepted as given. This reflects a philosophical perspective on the nature of knowledge, suggesting that some truths may always elude our understanding.
In practice
In a lecture discussing the limits of scientific inquiry, this quote can illustrate the ongoing mystery in the universe.
The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is "something behind it all" is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.
Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.
Although the elusive 'cure' may be a distant dream, understanding the true nature of cancer will enable it to be better controlled and less menacing.
Many investigators feel uneasy stating in public that the origin of life is a mystery, even though behind closed doors they admit they are baffled.
Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given,' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.
For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.
The debate's over. The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.
Mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence . . . the science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe which are concealed by appearances.
We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them.
When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.
The pure culture is the foundation for all research on infectious disease.
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