The physical universe is made up of objects and events in space and time. We refer to them collectively as Things. How does the human mind convert things in the observed universe, into laws? What role does our consciousness play in this conversion process? We propose that the dynamic pathways connecting the neurons in our brains have a dual interpretation, as a thing-law. The pathways are things, by virtue of their material nature. However, our consciousness also accords a pathway the interpretation of a law, which could be a thought, an idea, an emotion, a number, a geometrical figure, a physical law, or a mathematical theorem. The mind's conversion of things into laws is what we call the horizontal fundamental. But are laws different from things? In the emergent complex universe, apparently yes. However, as we dig deeper and deeper into the reductionist layers of reality, a process we call the vertical fundamental, laws and things become more and more like each other, until deepest down, they become one and the same.
Tejinder Pal Singh