A logician's view of a "theory" is that it is simply the shortest (in bits) description that fits (more or less) the data. We can use any computational engine we want to simulate the universe from the description, but since they are all equivalent to Turing Machines (modulo the number of bits required to describe the interpreter), it doesn't much matter which one we use. Fredkin is fond of "Life"-like cellular automata, but those models may require substantial modifications depending upon the "geometry" that fits the universe the best.
The job of physics/chemistry/biology/etc. is the "compress" the experimental data into as few bits as possible. We are allowed an arbitrarily high degree of cleverness in coming up with such descriptions, but clearly new data may require arbitrarily large adjustments to the existing descriptions.
It is interesting that physics loves "continuity" so much that they embed this concept into their view of physical models. Thus, when Einstein showed that Newton was wrong, physics explained this by saying that the previous models & data were correct, but just not for the precision required at large distances, high velocities, large masses, etc.
I am particularly interested in why the simplistic models of the ancients _ever_ worked. There seems to be no a priori reason why _circular_ orbits should work as well as they do; if most of the planetary orbits had been highly elliptical, it might have required another several millenia for the mathematicians to come up with a proper description. Furthermore, if the planetary orbits had been closer together, the resulting chaos would have made even elliptical orbits an impossible model.
(Using some of the web sites that allow experimentation with Newtonian gravity, it appears to me that _most_ gravitational systems with a relatively small number of objects "blow up" (i.e., kick one or more of their objects off to infinity) after not very much time. So perhaps a planetary system with widely spaced (minimally interacting) planets in nearly circular orbits is characteristic of long-lived configurations.)
So we fall back on the fact that the fact that we are here, may imply that highly chaotic planetary orbits are inimical to human existence. We now have the circular argument that the universe is understandable (partially decomposable/factorable) simply because that is the only universe that supports human life. Alternatively, of all of the chaos in our lives, only the pitifully small percentage that is amenable to simple patterns is actually visible/"understandable" to us.
So, yes, Max is correct, but only vacuously so.
