Robert Laughlin, in his book 'a different universe: reinventing physics from bottom down' argues that all physical laws, are emergent and follows from a collective behavior. Laughlin believes that the reductionist approach works up to a point, but it has its limitations. He is of view that nature is instead regulated by powerful and general principles of organization, such as symmetry, and that
... [Show full abstract] these cannot be deduced mathematically from first principles. Physical laws relevant to life, such as rigidity or hydrodynamics, are independent of the underlying fundamentals.