I favor the view that natural phenomena can be explained by thermodynamics and more generally by physics, but there are diverse phenomena with advocates to the contrary. Examples are:

The emergence of speech occurs, according to theory based on Chomsky’s work, from brain structures suddenly arising over a short period of time to enable speech. A contrary position is that human culture and networking solves problems that lead to the creation of language; problem solving uses energy and is constrained by the laws of physics.

An emergent physical phenomenon that is irreducible to the micro-properties of its components an example of strong emergence (Mark A. Weak Emergence 1997). Chalmers stated `there is exactly one clear case of a strongly emergent phenomenon, and that is the phenomenon of consciousness' (Chalmers, D. Strong and Weak Emergence 2006).

In metabolic scaling, Glazier distinguishes favors a Darwinian (evolutionary) explanation over a Newtonian (physics or biophysics) explanation of metabolic rates, and argues that there is no universal law of metabolic scaling (Variable metabolic scaling breaks the law: from ‘Newtonian’ to ‘Darwinian’ approaches 2022 Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , Vol. 289, No. 1985

p. 20221605). I would argue that Darwinian evolution arises for thermodynamic reasons (for example, Kinetic effects of temperature on rates of genetic divergence and speciation, 2006 PNAS , Vol. 103, No. 24, p. 9130-9135), so that a Darwinian approach is not the opposite of a Newtonian approach.

Your views?