"It's always easy once you know the answer."

The hard part is figuring it out.

I'd also say it's also only easy when you know the right question, often that's the most important step in getting to an interesting answer.

And about what. The scope demarks the domain and defines the concepts. Once you've done that right, the question can be as obvious as 6×7.

Or maybe reality just isn't elegant.

An analogy would be psychology. The evolutionary path our brains took to develop to their current state is ... ugly. Why should things be different in physics?

That's certainly possible. It may be that we've lucked out so far, and are about to hit a wall, where things get more and more complex.

Another possibility is that developing the next level of theory, and finding a way to simplify it mathematically, are two different steps.

Does evolution affect physics?

There's two different things called physics: first there's the set of concepts, equations, techniques, and models that we as humans use to understand the world. Second, there's the way the actual physical world works.

As a human endeavor to have our brains predict things about the physical world, physics has to "run" on the human brain. In that sense, evolution shapes the physics that humans can conceive and understand. Evolution doesn't change what actually happens physically, so it doesn't affect physics that way.

The tricky part is that your first "physics" (human models) is also a part of the physical world. The human concepts and equations affect what humans do, which changes the physical world. There's a bit of a feedback loop.

Concepts, ideas, equations and models absolutely do change the world, in a very real and physical sense. They do not (probably) affect the fundamental laws of physics, though.

A good example of such a feedback loop are computers. It is impossible to think of modern physics without them, on the experimental side at least.

Another example are computers themselves. You can't build computers without computers, so they are already kind of building themselves, with us humans using as evolutionary slaves/hosts.

Computers are involved in the practical side of modern physics, but not in the conceptual side. When it is demonstrated that an algorithm will produce a trust-able result, no reference is made to any "real" aspect of computers. Instead, the algorithms are designed based on symbol manipulation and could just as well be carried out by a platonic physicist writing notes in the Mediterranean sand. The specific details of how computers are actually made impacts the implementation but not the results.

Also referred to as the map and the territory.

In the general sense of "evolution" (moving between states): absolutely! That's pretty much what physics is.

For an extreme example, see Wolfram's theory in New Kind of Science, a (controversial) hypothesis about how laws of physics evolve via cellular automata, simple programs producing complexity.

Even outside of this example, much of what we consider as "our universe" (macroscopically observable patterns and laws) evolved through micro-interactions. It was only last century that matter was discovered to be nothing special, just denser clumps of energy.

If you mean evolution in the strictest biological sense, i.e. a cat deciding to change the universal speed of light… unlikely. Though the connection between consciousness and physical world (objectivity, solipsism) is still a contentious and unsettled area.

No it's other way around. Physics sets the foundation for what's possible within evolution. Physics is the foundation for all other sciences.

>>> One of my favorite analogies is that it took humanity more than 1000 years

Nitpicking a bit but I think it took the whole mankind life on earth to create algebra :-) That's hundreds of thousands of years (provided mankind even "starts" somewhere)

That doesn't seem like that useful an analogy. It took a lot more than a thousand years to invent algebra. It also took a very long time to invent a bunch of things that anyone can understand and use, it's not a measure of their complexity or difficulty - wheels, domesticated cats, corn, pointy sticks, pants, etc.

Beautifully illustrated.

people have used algebra since ancient times. it just took 1000+ years to formalize it in a way that is more concrete