Would we ever be able to fully understand the laws of the universe?

[Delta2]

TL;DR

would we ever be able to fully understand the laws of the universe.
And if so would we ever be able to modify them?

So first of all ,we all agree that Universe exists and it is not totally chaotic , it seems to have some laws that govern its behavior.
Would we ever be able to fully discover and understand the true laws of the universe. Or human intelligence is limited (the way the human brain is constructed and operating just has some limitations, we all understand that) and we can only understand universe up to a (say) first order approximation? That all the laws we have discover and study up to this modern era are just an approximation of the true laws, which we will never be able to discover and understand?

And suppose the answer is yes that one day we will be able to fully understand the laws of the universe. Will we ever be able to modify the laws of the universe? Or the answer is definitely negative on this as at first glance, someone will have to have magical or divine powers to modify the laws of the universe?

 

[sophiecentaur]

Summary: would we ever be able to fully understand the laws of the universe.
And if so would we ever be able to modify them?

, it seems to have some laws that govern its behavior.

As far as I can see or have read, Science doesn't really work like that. The word "law" is the problem and it's used as a result of the original belief that a god fashioned the Universe according to some design algorithms.
In reality, what we can do is to produce equations and models that describe, to some limited degree, what is observed and these equations are accepted as good enough if they can be used to predict, successfully, the results of experiments and observations.
To" fullly understand" the laws would mean that, not only would we be able to say what will happen next under any circumstances (and Quantum Theory makes that a non starter) but it would also mean that we would be able to understand and predict everything about ourselves. It's like drawing the ultimate Map of Everything which would need to include a map of The Map itself, which would include a map of that map and so on. (Turtles all the way, in fact).

All we can hope for is to keep going in the process of incremental improvement on the models we use. That's quite hard enough!

 

[Delta2]

As far as I can see or have read, Science doesn't really work like that. The word "law" is the problem and it's used as a result of the original belief that a god fashioned the Universe according to some design algorithms.
In reality, what we can do is to produce equations and models that describe, to some limited degree, what is observed and these equations are accepted as good enough if they can be used to predict, successfully, the results of experiments and observations.
To" fullly understand" the laws would mean that, not only would we be able to say what will happen next under any circumstances (and Quantum Theory makes that a non starter) but it would also mean that we would be able to understand and predict everything about ourselves. It's like drawing the ultimate Map of Everything which would need to include a map of The Map itself, which would include a map of that map and so on. (Turtles all the way, in fact).

All we can hope for is to keep going in the process of incremental improvement on the models we use. That's quite hard enough!

Trying to understand some parts of your answer...Thinking...Till I come up with an understanding or some good questions, what do you think about my second question, if we would be able to modify the laws of the universe? Pretty much like a programmer that makes a simulation can setup whatever laws he wants within his program? Or since we can't fully understand them because of that map of the map of the map infinite recursion (if I understood that part) we can't fully modify em, but maybe partially modify them.

 

[sophiecentaur]

if we would be able to modify the laws of the universe?

I think that idea is meaningless. Laws (if you want to use that actual word) are immutable - except by the governing body. We are far too insignificant to aspire to setting or changing those laws. There is pretty strong evidence that all those laws apply wherever we look - far away or far back in time so how could they be 'changed'? We would be receiving images from billions of years ago with evidence of the'old set of laws' but, locally, our laws would be different? How does that make any sense at all.
That doesn't mean we could never find, somewhere, a subset of a huge superset of those laws which would indicate that some parts of the Universe may do things diffeerrently. Evidence indicates that is unlikely so, meanwhile, we will carry on with our existing knowledge.
Edit: We are constantly changing our interpretation of things - if that's what you are after.