We learn physics as a set of mathematics that tell us how the world behaves. It is easy for someone to get confused and think that these mathematics define that behavior. No. The mathematics were worked out in reverse by observing behavior and using math to put together a useful way of explaining, categorizing, and predicting observations. It’s no different than getting a gadget, taking it apart, and trying to figure out how it works.
It is always possible that the math is wrong. Often we find that learning one thing about the universe implies something else when we work out the math. Often we also discover that our math is broken when we devise an experiment to test the math and the universe behaves in a way that no longer fits.
Deconstructing reality this way tells us how reality behaves, but it does not tell us why. If you want to know the why, you have to leave physics behind and enter the realm of metaphysics and religion.
Or as Mark Twain put it: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Your epistemology defines what you believe can be factual. Your ontology defines what you believe is possible. Until you decide that your senses can be trusted in any sense, you cannot have science. What you decide about what can be trusted decides what science you are able to pursue. Until you realize that observations are repeatable and follow reliable patterns (not a metaphysical truth most of humanity has held historically, many still do not hold it to be true), you cannot pursue any science. The nature of what you believe can be known and inferred from your models, observations, and experiements will determine what hypotheses you can make and test.
“SCIENCE AROSE ONLY IN Europe because only medieval Europeans believed that science was possible and desirable. And the basis of their belief was their image of God and his creation. This was dramatically asserted to a distinguished audience of scholars attending the 1925 Lowell Lectures at Harvard by the great philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), who explained that science developed in Europe because of the widespread ‘faith in the possibility of science... derivative from medieval theology.’” ― Rodney Stark
By definition, this is not a testable hypothesis as these other theoretical universes are irretrievably separated from ours. That’s what makes them a separate universe.
See STFL #20 for why this theory even exists.
One of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous epigrams says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This is a sensible and easily accepted statement. However, I think there’s a deeper level of understanding that is even more practical to daily human life: “All technology is magic.” This captures the essence of both what humans believe about technology and what humans actually know.
The technologies we like are the ones that are magical. The reason a person goes to a crowdfunding site to invest in some bit of technology is because they see some gadget and think, “Wow, that really solves a problem I have.” That "wow” is the magic. The same goes for just about all technologies we adopt. We adopt them because they “magically” solve a problem for us. It is true that some technology is used in commodity form and we no longer even think of it and wonder: ballpoint pens, paper, squared lumber, uniform weights and measures, etc. However, they were magical to the first humans that adopted them.
Also we generally understand far less about technology than we presume we do. There are those who understand the principles operating each part of their car or home heating system or computer or whatever. However, we only understand these on a macro scale: this part pushes on that, this electrical switch turns on when that sensor detects this, etc. We may even understand on a certain micro scale: a digital switch on a CPU chip is on when the voltage increases above a certain level and off when below a different level, or understanding how the various molecules interact when mixed in compounds to trade atoms and molecule groups to form new compounds. However, if you keep asking for why something works on smaller and smaller scales, you eventually get to the point of “because gravity” or “because magnetism” but we don’t know what those are except maybe that the existence of one may imply the necessary existence of the other. We don’t know why fundamental forces happen, but we know they do. That’s magic. Everything we use contains a little magic, at least a bit of something we don’t grok.
We should respect the limits of our knowledge and enjoy the experience: magic.