Barkley, regarding the “multiverse” theory, it’s not clear whether you’re referring to (a) different bubbles in the inflationary scenario, which hypothetically would possess fundamental laws identical to our own but with potentially different constants “frozen out”, or (b) Tegmark’s Level IV multiverse, which has never been observed. Regarding (a), as I understand it with my rather limited expertise, the freezing-out process that sets the constants and keeps them stable is itself universal. Regarding (b), it gets into very woolly territory for obvious reasons, but I will remark that it is rather a coincidence that the particular universe in which we find ourselves seems to work according to absolutely stable and absolutely global fundamental laws.
As for your second point about air resistance, one must distinguish between fundamental laws and surface generalizations. If you phrase the law of gravity as “things fall down”, it is a surface generalization with exceptions. Closer to your sensory experiences, yes, but that’s not always a good thing. The law of gravity in its fundamental form describes a curvature of spacetime which influences all matter. Other forces also impinge upon matter. The sum of these influences is a surface phenomenon, which may or may not add up to “thing X falls down”. But the contribution of gravitation to the sum is (so far as we know) a fundamental and absolutely universal law. It applies to the chair beneath you just as much as to a satellite in orbit.
Barkley, regarding the “multiverse” theory, it’s not clear whether you’re referring to (a) different bubbles in the inflationary scenario, which hypothetically would possess fundamental laws identical to our own but with potentially different constants “frozen out”, or (b) Tegmark’s Level IV multiverse, which has never been observed. Regarding (a), as I understand it with my rather limited expertise, the freezing-out process that sets the constants and keeps them stable is itself universal. Regarding (b), it gets into very woolly territory for obvious reasons, but I will remark that it is rather a coincidence that the particular universe in which we find ourselves seems to work according to absolutely stable and absolutely global fundamental laws.
As for your second point about air resistance, one must distinguish between fundamental laws and surface generalizations. If you phrase the law of gravity as “things fall down”, it is a surface generalization with exceptions. Closer to your sensory experiences, yes, but that’s not always a good thing. The law of gravity in its fundamental form describes a curvature of spacetime which influences all matter. Other forces also impinge upon matter. The sum of these influences is a surface phenomenon, which may or may not add up to “thing X falls down”. But the contribution of gravitation to the sum is (so far as we know) a fundamental and absolutely universal law. It applies to the chair beneath you just as much as to a satellite in orbit.