If we can make up the laws of nature as we go along, physics is pointless and silly. Pagels's argument for the importance of the computer in the sciences runs as follows. Each of the great transformations and spurts that mark the history of science is associated with a new instrument, a new means of getting at the truth of nature. Now the computer is the engine of another major advance. Whereas the earlier instruments disclosed what was too large or too small to be seen with the unaided eye, the computer elucidates what is too complex to be understood with the unaided mind.
Computers perform many mundane chores in science.
These are essential tasks, but they hardly portend a revolutionary change in the way science is done. When Pagels speaks of the computer as a new scientific instrument, he has in mind quite different ways of putting it to work. The idea is not to install a computer in the laboratory but rather to build a new laboratory in the world inside the computer. Consider the problem of figuring out what happens to a large star as it reaches the end of its life and explodes as a supernova. Theoretical methods are also of limited utility.