By contrast, the Three Laws of Thermodynamics are =NOT= predictive,
but rather are mere CONSTRAINTS. They tell you what a system that is
so hopelessly complex that one has no hope in hell of ever fully analyzing
or controlling =CAN'T= do, when the best one can hope to do is merely draw
a "black box" boundary around it and balance the mean fluxes in and out,
which no reall clue of what those fluxes do while they are "inside the box."

Yes, thermodynamics is statistical in nature. If you think that means
it is not predictive, you clearly don't really undertand the first
thing about modern physics.

While the constraints of Thermo are important and useful, there is _NO WAY_
that they are =MORE= important than Netwon's Three Laws of Motion.
Newton's Laws are the Mother of =PHYSICS= --- the Queen of All the Sciences.

Nope. Strictly, Newton's Laws are actually incorrect but remain
convenient for approximate answers. Relativity and Quantum Machanics
(QM) deliver much more precise answers, and QM, for your information,
tells us that the entire universe is a 'statistical' place, as was
'predicted' (not really, but the trail was laid) by thermodynamics in
the 19th Century. It was the 2nd Law that lead to the realisation that
time had to be seen as a dimension, and it is the 2nd Law that makes
possible our undertanding of the transition from the very small
(qantum) world where time appear directionless to the macro world we
live in where it does have direction. Some theoroticians even believe
that our sense of the direction of time is in itself a thermodynamic
process, and temporal direction ('time's arrow') was determined at the
Big Bang itself.

But of course you can't be expected to comprehend this, as you are
seeming still stuck in the 17th Century...

Newton's Laws are not the 'Mother of =PHYSICS=' any more, but are very
handy for mere Engineering --- an occupation for second-class grunts
(as you so eloquently put it yourself.)

What happens when light strikes a mirror is actually a QM process.
We've given up on these tiny little marbles of Newtonian physics some
time back, you know.

JimM