Why is there scientific law at all? We physicists explain the
origin and structure of matter and energy, but not the laws that
do this. Does the idea of causation apply to where the laws
themselves came from? Even Alan Guth's "free lunch" gives us the
universe after the laws start acting. We have narrowed down the
range of field theories that can yield the big bang universe we
live in, but why do the laws that govern it seem to be constant
in time, and always at work? One can imagine a universe in which
laws are not truly lawful. Talk of miracles does just this, when
God is supposed to make things work. Physics aims to find The
Laws and hopes that these will be uniquely constrained, as when
Einstein wondered if God had any choice when He made the
universe. One fashionable escape hatch from this asserts that
there are infinitely many universes, each sealed off from the
others, which can obey any sort of law one can imagine, with
parameters or assumptions changed. This "multiverse" view
represents the failure o