What you're asking is tantamount to asking whether a forest takes any action as in my analogy the forest is the universe and all the trees and foliage are all constituents of said forest. I can see why it's tempting to think the forest doesn't ostensibly "do" anything. The forest is somewhat abstract and how can anything abstract "do" anything? Well, a forest can burn down, it can expand and contract, it can change its shape..hell, there are lots of things "the collection" can do.
But the forest, while taking and being possible of taking, many many actions, does nothing objectively. It is, and it does, but it does not try or attempt anything, there is no objective.
These laws you're talking about are merely our best conclusions that fit the data. Having these "laws" articulated does not preclude the possibility of something unexpected happening, like the fine structure constant varying in different parts of the universe. I think it smacks of arrogance to basically say "we have observed a pattern many times (but for a relatively short time) from one tiny corner of the universe and therefore those patterns must be present everywhere in the universe forever." Arrogance at the least and incorrect reasoning at worst.
No, that sounds like a theory that fits all the data. These laws, such as thermodynamics, aerodynamics, etc, are not simply conclusions that fit all the data, they are an observed rule. A pendulum will perform as expected EVERY time. Airplanes do not spontaneously fall out of the air, entropy in a system does not randomly reverse. If all the variables in an equation are the same, the answer will always be the same. You're a mathematician if I remember correctly, you should know this. Only different variables can yield a different answer. There MAY be shortcuts to a given rule, and that is hard to determine. But do you think the universe is so unstable that physical laws are only followed sometimes? Well if that's the case god must exist, but there's no indication that that is the case. Gravity remains a constant, so does electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces, photons always behave the same way they have since we knew they existed.
That is induction, not deduction. Induction, tantamount to extrapolation, is logical but being such isn't enough to prove the patterns we have seen will be the pattern we will see. To think that science as we know it is not open to revision is equivalent to closed mindedness and shutting off our imagination.
One area we absolutely agree on.
It reminds me of an IQ test where you're given a sequence of numbers and you're asked to predict the next number in the sequence. In my analogy, the sequence of numbers represents data collected from observation. The pattern in the given sequence is the so called physical LAW. The problem is that there are literally infinitely many different patterns that equally well (perfectly) fit the data. So which ones out of that infinite sea of patterns is "the" law?
Not so. Continuance of a pattern is seperate to observation under controlled variables. Similar, I see where you're deriving your opinion, but I don't see that as a valid analogy.
