When we ask a child what $2 \times 3$ is, we expect him/her to spend time thinking and only give us an answer after some energy has been spent solving the question.
When we swipe in an app on our phone, we expect the operation to be computed by the phone, spending energy on this computing operation.
When we drop a ping pong ball on the edge of a table, we expect it to just "solve" it's path on it's own, and "just" figure out where it will go. It's actually a complex computation going on to determine the path that ping pong ball will take.
So my question is: Is there a computing force in the universe? Is there a theory that accounts for these "universal computations"? Is this a study field?
Thank you for your input and sorry for my lack of knowledge. I'm really curious about this!