Can There Be Laws Before Laws of Nature?
Law Before The Laws of Nature
by John D. Wise, PhD
“Where did the laws of physics come from? I think I’ve found the answer,” (João Magueijo, New Scientist, 11 May 2026). Cosmologist João Magueijo argues that the laws of physics are not eternal givens but arose from an initially chaotic, lawless state, eventually “crystallizing” into stable order through random processes.
The Frontier of Immanence
Physics, we have long been taught, is the study of the physical world in which we live, the uncovering of its laws and their mathematical expression. Physics, that is, concerns itself with … well, physics. Which is, really, just another way to say that physics does not concern itself with metaphysics. Here, however, João Magueijo makes the case that metaphysics should be within the realm of physics and cosmology, tackling the question: where do the laws of physics come from?[1]
He begins with what every scientist accepts but rarely examines:
“Reality, for all its glory and cosmic drama, seems to operate in a consistent, predictable fashion.”
This happy fact is not incidental. It is the condition under which science exists at all. The laws of nature, he notes, are not mere conveniences, but “the load-bearing beams that support the entire theoretical edifice of physics.” And yet, having acknowledged their indispensability in the practice of science, he proposes something far more radical:
“We must entertain a more unsettling possibility: that once upon a time, there were no laws at all.”
But why must we?[2]
Chaos Is Not Nothing
Magueijo’s proposal is framed in vivid terms:
“There was a period before particles, before geometry, before even the notion of time. Reality would have been a chaotic mess.”
But a crucial distinction must be made at once.
Chaos is not nothing.
A “chaotic mess” is still something. It admits fluctuation, transition, and description. It possesses enough structure to allow instability, enough continuity to permit change, enough intelligibility to be spoken of. His proposal, therefore, does not describe laws arising from nothing, but from a prior condition that is already structured in ways the theory doesn’t account for. Magueijo’s proposal does not answer the question he proposes.
It relocates it.
The Mythos of Emergence
The mechanism he offers us is drawn from stochastic systems:
“Nothing is dependable in the earliest phase of the universe before stable laws emerged. Constants fluctuate wildly. Conservation laws rudely fail. Matter is created, but also destroyed, at random.” (emphasis mine)
Over time, however, this initial instability resolves:
“Random systems… have a built-in feature whereby they can stumble into configurations that they can’t escape from, known as an absorbing state.”
And finally:
“The absorbing state is the built-in point in chaotic evolution where the laws are forced to crystallise.”
The language is modern, but the structure is familiar: primordial chaos, followed by stabilization into order. It is less a scientific, statistical, or mathematical derivation than a cosmogony, a narrative of how disorder gives way to form, reminiscent of Tiamat in the Enuma Elish. And we should not overlook the loaded term: evolution, which raises a deeper issue.
The Compulsion to Closure
The question “Where do the laws of nature come from?” is legitimate. But in its modern form, it is asked under a constraint: any answer must remain within the system. Methodological naturalism forbids the appeal to anything beyond it.
This produces what we may call the Compulsion to Closure.
Order must arise, but without an ordering source. Structure must emerge, but without a grounding principle. The explanation must close upon itself, which results in a familiar pattern. Laws are explained by processes, but processes are structured dynamics with constrained transitions, and often “emerge” into stable outcomes – the absorbing state. These processes function, in effect, as laws under another name.
Magueijo himself, thinking he has avoided the problem, explicitly articulates the difficulty:
“Many previous attempts to explain how these laws arose have foundered because they ended up introducing deeper ‘meta-laws’ along the way.”
But this present proposal does not escape the problem. It reproduces it. The stochastic dynamics, the absorbing states, the conditions of stabilization all serve as the very meta-structure the argument seeks to avoid. Closure is not achieved.
It is deferred.
The Trap of Bad Infinity (schlechte unendlichkeit)
At this point, the analysis aligns closely with G W F Hegel’s concept of bad infinity.
Each explanation points beyond itself: laws are explained by processes; processes are explained by conditions, and conditions are explained by further structures …, but this chain does not terminate. It perpetuates indefinitely, never landing at a sufficient ground. The system moves, but … it does not arrive.
Practical Faith
There is an even deeper tension within this argument, however.
On the one hand, the laws are said not to be fundamental. On the other, they are acknowledged as indispensable, the “load-bearing beams” of the entire scientific enterprise.
Similarly, the author notes that physicists instinctively treat the laws as “eternal, perfect, immutable.” This instinct is not arbitrary. It reflects the actual practice of science, which depends on invariance, stability, and repeatability.
Here belief is not revealed in declaration. Instead, it is revealed in practice. Scientists can abstractly deny the fundamental nature of law, but they can’t do science without relying on it.
They can’t live without relying on it.
The Return of the Forbidden
An irony emerges here in this essay that seems everywhere present in science today. Magueijo is a maverick within the system – tolerated, even celebrated, despite near-heretical musings: 1) a lawless universe, 2) fluctuating constants, 3) violations of conservation, and 4) stochastic creation and destruction of matter. No small set of misdemeanors these.
But certain possibilities remain excluded in principle. The system is open to speculative infinity, but closed to the possibility of mind, intention, or design as an explanatory ground. This is not a conclusion reached by investigation, but a boundary set in advance. It is not that explanation has reached its limit.
It is that certain kinds of explanation are not permitted.
The Mirage of Pure Process
The metaphysical commitment becomes explicit in a key move:
“the creation of matter in the universe can become not an event, but a process: something extended, contingent, fallible.”
This is not mere physics. It is process metaphysics.
Reality is no longer a grounded, stable being; it is an ongoing becoming – Process itself. But becoming requires continuity, structure, and intelligibility. A process is not self-explanatory, unless it is something more than process, unless it is Being itself. Magueijo presupposes the conditions, or the being, that make process possible.
So to explain being in terms of process, one must assume what one is attempting to explain.
The Imperialism of the Borrowed Tool
The pattern becomes even clearer in our author’s own methodological terms:
“I borrowed tools from evolutionary biology…”
This is not accidental. When explanatory pressure increases, the framework imports concepts that already assume structured process: selection, retention, stability, persistence. These are not neutral tools. They carry with them a logic of ordered development, even when stripped of explicit[3] teleology.
What appears as methodological borrowing is, in fact, conceptual dependence. The logic of Darwin is colonial. It won’t, it hasn’t, it can’t be contained to biology once it is has been adopted by science.
The Return of Logic
At every stage, one element remains unavoidable.
Even a “lawless” universe must be described coherently. Even chaos must be distinguished from non-chaos. Even randomness must operate within a space of intelligible possibilities. Logic is not one law among others. It is the condition under which anything can be proposed, denied, or known. The attempt to process before the laws of physics does not succeed in process-ing before logic.
The boundary remains, no matter how strategically it is denied.
Historical Memory
Magueijo briefly acknowledges the historical roots of this tension. Before the rise of “the modern”:
“Ideas about natural laws echoed divine law: timeless, universal and not open to negotiation. Even after science secularised, the reverence remained.” (emphasis mine)
This is not a minor observation. It points to the inheritance on which science still depends. The expectation of order, stability, and intelligibility was not derived from science.
It made science possible.
The modern project attempts to retain these features of intelligibility while denying any grounding for them. The result is a growing strain that becomes ever more visible as inquiry and discovery deepen.
A Small Observation
There is, perhaps, a final irony.
The attempt to explain how laws arise from lawlessness ends by introducing processes that behave very much like laws. The system must rely on structured, intelligible dynamics in order to generate the order it claims was not there.
The effort is serious, and the questions are real.
But I cannot help observing:
If the universe “stumbled” into its laws, it appears to have been stumbling according to a remarkably consistent set of rules.
Footnotes
[1] One might think that the study of biology, too, would be concerned with studying the nature of life rather than its origins. The parallel is striking.
[2] We “must” because if we take anything as given we are forced to acknowledge the Giver. This is the trick of immanence, the blindness of methodological naturalism: NOTHING must be accepted as ground.
[3] The oft-repeated Darwinian claim that evolution is not seeking to explain teleology in nature has always been a transparent self-deception.
John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation: Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.
He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus.
In 2024 he underwent a radical collapse of his old-earth evolutionary worldview by studying science with his wife Jenny, in particular microbiology and genomics. Writing for CEH is a gift from the Creator.