Cryptanalysis is absolutely dependent on the forward direction being tractable. That is, given a candidate cipher, key and plaintext, we can quickly compute what the resulting ciphertext would be.
Nature does not possess this property. For example, to compute the shape of a single protein molecule from quantum electrodynamics would take longer than the estimated lifespan of the universe.
To deal with this, we have to use an arsenal of tricks: shortcuts and approximations, intermediate observations, partial understanding gathered in simple cases that are more tractable etc. But these tricks depend on nature being impartial. To put it bluntly, there's no point in approaching it as a problem of cryptanalysis, because if a cryptographic adversary has exponentially more computing power than you have, it's game over no matter what you do; conversely, most techniques of science don't work in cryptanalysis because ciphers are designed to make sure they don't work.
Nature does not possess this property. For example, to compute the shape of a single protein molecule from quantum electrodynamics would take longer than the estimated lifespan of the universe.
I don't understand -- if you want to compute anything, even "tractable" problems, by modeling their implementation down to the QED level, it takes too long -- even the Casesar cipher would (because I'd either have to model my neurons carrying out the operation, and their subatomic interactions, or do the same for a semiconductor).
Yes, nature has exponent...
Short version: Why can't cryptanalysis methods be carried over to science, which looks like a trivial problem by comparison, since nature doesn't intelligently remove patterns from our observations? Or are these methods already carried over?
Long version: Okay, I was going to spell this all out with a lot of text, but it started ballooning, so I'm just going to put it in chart form.
Here is what I see as the mapping from cryptography to science (or epistemology in general). I want to know what goes in the "???" spot, and why it hasn't been used for any natural phenomenon less complex than the most complex broken cipher. (Sorry, couldn't figure out how to center it.)
EDIT: Removed "(cipher known)" requirement on 2nd- and 3rd-to-last rows because the scientific analog can be searching for either natural laws or constants.