How John Wheeler lost his faith in the law

Abstract

In 1972, at a symposium celebrating the 70th birthday of Paul Dirac, John Wheeler proclaimed that "the framework falls down for everything that one has ever called a law of physics". Responsible for this "breakage [. . . ] among the laws of physics" was the general theory of relativity, more specifically its prediction of massive stars gravitationally collapsing to "black holes", a term Wheeler himself had made popular some years earlier. In our paper, we investigate how Wheeler reached the conclusion that gravitational collapse calls into question the lawfulness of physics and how, subsequently, he tried to develop a new worldview, rethinking in his own way the lessons of quantum mechanics as well as drawing inspiration from other disciplines, not least biology.