In some sense, science is the most extreme form of compression - Newtonian mechanics explains an incredible number of phenomena in a few lines of text.
It does, but only vaguely unless you already know how it works and can work backwards to Newton's laws. Eg Newtonian mechanics can explain how flying works, but if you don't already know then it's hard to go from Newton's 3 laws to a functional explanation of why planes don't fall out of the sky.
Some of that is also the domain. It's less that science is an extreme form of compression, and more that natural phenomenon are highly compressible. They're a small number of kinds of interactions repeated a bajillion times. How many equations does it take to explain electricity (ignoring equations that are derivatives of ones already included)? I think it's less than 5.
On some level, you could probably reduce all of the Standard Model down to models of atoms, their motion, and the basic subatomic particles (the non-quantum ones). That would explain almost everything that happens on Earth in a very short form, though few people would be able to go from that to explaining how lightning works.
I agree it's an oversimplification. The example I think of is something like Newton's law of gravitation vs Ptolemaic epicycles: one simple explanation replaced many layers of tweaks.
It's also a relevant example for AI - one paper tested the ability of Transformers to model planetary orbits: unlike Newton's Law, the implicit forces they learn are nonsense.
Yes. But /lossful/ compression: (scientific, philosophical etc.) laws compress an abstract narration of events into that tiny, hard, fundamental, predictive detail.
(Then it depends on your concern: "Aagh, the aunt fell!" // "Oh yes, that'd be Newton")
Compression minimizes the representation of information.
Laws (scientific, philosophical etc.) as compression represent the common side of classes of events - an abstraction of said events, stripping the irrelevant - irrelevant to some perspective, or irrelevant in a potential Procuste's bed. So, laws are compression, but a so extremely lossful compression that the loss can be relevant.
Brutally, "there may be more to the story of the fall of an elderly than just gravitation" - also in the sense that there are details behind the event.
Laws are compression - yes, with caveats.
On a more scientific, epistemological side: Einstein extended Newton covering more exceptions (reducing the abstraction - reducing the loss).
Some of that is also the domain. It's less that science is an extreme form of compression, and more that natural phenomenon are highly compressible. They're a small number of kinds of interactions repeated a bajillion times. How many equations does it take to explain electricity (ignoring equations that are derivatives of ones already included)? I think it's less than 5.
On some level, you could probably reduce all of the Standard Model down to models of atoms, their motion, and the basic subatomic particles (the non-quantum ones). That would explain almost everything that happens on Earth in a very short form, though few people would be able to go from that to explaining how lightning works.