Unlawful Laws

A Philosopher’s Footnotes to The Three-Body Problem
Author

Dan Li (李丹)

1 Unlawful Laws: A Philosopher’s Footnotes to The Three-Body Problem

Welcome to Unlawful Laws, a digital philosophy of science book told through the haunting imagination of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. This book explores how modern science collapses — and sometimes revives — under the weight of unpredictability, chaos, and epistemic uncertainty.

Note

“Physics has never existed, and will never exist.” — Yang Dong, string theorist

1.1 🧠 What This Book Is About

Science once promised order, law, and prediction. But what if those very promises break down? Drawing on insights from statistics, philosophy, machine learning, and nonlinear systems — and guided by events in sci-fi The Three-Body Problem — this book journeys through:

  • Epistemic breakdowns (e.g., replication crisis, failed induction)
  • Chaotic systems (e.g., weather, climate, celestial mechanics)
  • Model fragility and antifragility
  • New strategies to live with radical uncertainty

Each chapter includes embedded interactive components to let you simulate scientific breakdowns — from drifting coin flips to collapsing orbits to AI model failure.

1.2 🧭 Book Structure

This book is organized into three parts:

1.2.1 Part I — When Laws Fail

How science begins to crack under the weight of failed replication, unknowable futures, and machine learning dilemmas.

  • The illusion of stable physical laws
  • Hume’s problem of induction and modern analogues
  • Why some machine learning models work — but no one knows why

1.2.2 Part II — Modeling the Unlawful

Can we represent the chaotic? When simulation replaces explanation.

  • Astronomy as allegory: from epicycles to Trisolaran chaos
  • Limits of prediction in climate models and celestial mechanics
  • Computability and the fundamental limits of knowledge

1.2.3 Part III — Living Beyond Law

What kind of science and society remain when law collapses?

  • Fragility and antifragility in the sciences
  • Feyerabend, pluralism, and knowledge systems beyond the lab
  • Strategies to live with radical uncertainty

1.3 🎮 Interactive Features Coming Soon

This book will include embedded simulations:

  • 🎲 Coin-flip simulator with drifting probabilities
  • 🎯 Induction paradox visualizations
  • 🤖 Machine learning classifier toggles
  • 🌌 Ptolemaic vs. Copernican solar models
  • 🪐 Chaotic pendulum and three-body simulators
  • 🧬 Fragile vs. antifragile replication demo
  • ⚖️ Interactive debate toggle on Feyerabend’s thesis

These components are built using custom JavaScript widgets and Quarto’s interactive framework.

1.4 🌍 Language Toggle Coming Soon

We plan to support bilingual text (English/中文) for broader accessibility.

1.5 📘 About the Author

Dan Li is a philosopher of science with a dual Ph.D. in Informatics and Philosophy of Science. She explores how scientific knowledge is shaped — and sometimes shaken — by uncertainty and complexity.

1.7 📡 Stay Involved

This is a living book. All source code and future improvements are available on GitHub:

Feedback and pull requests are welcome.