Physicists have made great contributions to molecular biology, but this isn't one of those cases. This one is so wrong at so many levels it's hard to to justice to it. Much of it just misinterprets things we already know.

In the article it says:

Davies and Lineweaver claim that cancer is actually an organized and systematic response to some sort of stress or physical challenge. It might be triggered by a random accident, they say, but thereafter it more or less predictably unfolds.

There's nothing new here. Cancer is basically deregulated cellular replication and proliferation. These are core processes in multicellular organisms, so of course they unfold predictably. The trigger is often a mutation ("random accident") in a key regulatory gene.

The article says the new theory "challenges the orthodox view that cancer develops anew in each host". But we know that the mechanism of proliferation does not develop anew in each cancer; only the trigger is different in different cancers.

The physicists say “We envisage cancer as the execution of an ancient program pre-loaded into the genomes of all cells,” and that "it will express genes that are more deeply conserved among multicellular organisms, and so are in some sense more ancient."

Since cellular replication programs are deeply rooted and ancient because they are fundamental processes, this shouldn't be surprising.

"Sure enough, cancer reverts to an ancient form of metabolism called fermentation, which can supply energy with little need for oxygen, although it requires lots of sugar." Guess they are unaware that your muscle cells do they same when they are starved for oxygen! Anaerobic "fermentation" is a standard part of our metabolic system under certain conditions.

This goes on and on...