Interestingly enough, though, what is it that is so aesthetically pleasing that we want there to be a single theory of everything -- why does everything need to be explained in one fell swoop? This idea of a Theory of Everything is becoming more philiosophical than scientific. Aristotle and Plato were unsuccesful in their attempt to make a theory work, and Hawking said, in A Brief History of Time, that even if we had a Theory of Everything, it would necessarily be a large set of equations. "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"(Hawking in Fletcher, 2008, 196).
Now, though, Hawking has revised his views. In the new book, The Grand Design, Hawking and Mlodinow (Caltech physicist) argue that it is a set of equations that will, indeed, tie theories together, but that a final theory may never have a unique set of...
While a network of mathematical connections links strong theory into one huge, overachieving, and quite robust theory (the M-Theory), philosophers might argue that it is network and relationship, much like the human neural network, that actually constitues the theory (Hawking and Mlodinow, 2010).
REFERENCES
Fletcher, A. (2008). Life, the Universe and Everything: Investigating God and the New Physics. Denver, CO: Lulu Publishers.
Hawking and Mlodinow. (2010, September 27). The Elusive Theory of Everything. Retrieved October 2010, from Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-elusive-thoery-of-everything
Hawking and Mlodinow. (2010). The Grand Design. New York: Bantam.
Pais, A. (1982). Subtle is the Lord.... The Science and Life of Albert Einstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
