The goal of physics has always been to find the fundamental constituents of nature and their interactions. Once those are known the rest is nothing more than an application of this theory. This search for a fundamental theory is very much like Hilbert's goal to find the formal axiomatic system that describes all of mathematics. I argue that just like Hilbert's dream this one is equally doomed. It is the emergent phenomena that are to fundamental physics what true and unprovable statements are to mathematics. I show that there any number of such statements in physics and I provide an easy example. I further argue that emergence should not be seen as a weakness of physics. Rather, it is a way to obtain new insights into old problems.
Olaf Dreyer