One of my favorite quates from Ricky Gervais, Which he seemed to have improvised during an appearance on the Stephen Colbert show, has to do with the truthfulness of scientific claims compared to the truth presented in the Holy books. Gervais said that if you destroyed all the Holy books in the world, in a thousand years they will not come back, they will be gone for good. But if you destroyed all of the science books, in a thousand years they will be back because the laws of the universe don't care about what you believe in.
Say what you may about Ricky Gervais (I personally like the guy), he has a strong point there. Science is discovered, not invented. The laws of the universe are out there whether we are there to experience them or not and if a distant civilization on the other side of the galaxy were to write a physics book, it will undoubtedly be pretty similar to our books, since we both observe the same universal laws.