Physical theories can't be "proven" in the same way as mathematical conjectures, so we have to rely on agreement with experiment, self-consistency, "simplicity"

Physical theories can't be "proven" in the same way as mathematical conjectures, so we have to rely on agreement with experiment, self-consistency, "simplicity" (e.g. Kolmogorov complexity or some approximation), lack of counterexamples/disproof, etc. In this sense, I agree with Robert Harper (e.g. Practical Foundations for Programming Languages, section 22.2) that unprovable claims regarding computability may be merely "theses" to logicians, but to scientists they should be considered "laws" just as much as Newton's law of universal gravitation. In fact, other than purported claims of "hypercomputation" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercomputation#Criticism ) or the anthropocentric "microtubule"-type theories popularised by Penrose ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti... ), it seems that the computability of the universe is commonly accepted 'background knowledge' by most researchers in the field. Even those making extreme claims in this area, like those refuted in http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf are presumably assuming that the universe is computable; there doesn't seem to be much point debating computational efficiency of soap bubbles if I thought (for example) that halting oracles existed!