I believe one day software will be advanced enough to reduce the number of necessary lenses for quality photos.. "Software eating DSLR".

Is that belief in any way based on physics?

No. It is based on the advancement of software that can de-blur images.

For example: http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/leojia/deblurring.htm.

The same would have been said about vacuum tubes...

No it wouldn't. There are fundamental laws of optics that require certain sizes in order to get a quality image.

True true, but remember if you are willing to assume sparsity and use reconstruction algorithms, there are by now well-established ways to get around Shannon-Nyquist with high probability (ie the whole compressed sensing stuff). Just sayin'...