Constructor theory

As formally introduced by Physicists David Deutsch in 2012, Constructor theory "seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical transformations – those that can be caused to happen and those that cannot."^[1]

Introduction

Constructor Theory recognises that "the empirical content of a scientific theory is in what it forbids." This respects the way scientific principles (e.g. of the conservation of energy) allow us to rule conceivable transformations (counterfactuals) as either conceivable or as simply incompatible with what we understand about how the universe works.

The theory is being brought into Naturalising Sense-Making through Substrate-Independence Theory.

Key Concepts

The language of Constructor Theory breaks significantly with traditional physics. Key concepts include:

Tasks and Counterfactuals

At the heart of Constructor Theory we find Tasks. These are possible (or impossible) physical transformations. A counterfactual is simply an imagined physical transformation (specifying a task which would need to be completed).

Constructors

For Physicists David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto, constructors are identified functionally by their capacity for catalysing some form of transformation and of remaining able to cause new (further) transformations.

Substrates

In Constructor Theory, anything which can be transformed features as substrate. Any task must, by definition, transform some substrate from a prior state to a transformed state. Specifying any task therefore requires identification of some input attribute of a substrate and some output attribute of a substrate.