Physical science fundamentals and principles

Elusive Theory of Everything

The Theory of Everything is an elusive hypothesis scientists have been searching for since the early 1900s. It is a theory of physics that fully explains and links all known physical phenomena -- a "General Theory of Everything." Even the Ancient Greeks thought that might be an underlying unity for all of the universe, but after Einstein's general theory of relativity was published in 1915 the search for a unified field theory intensified. In fact, it was something Einstein was obsessed with throughout his life, and particularly during his last years -- however unsuccessfully (Pais, 1982, Chapter 17).

In a marvelous example of the way we see our world, authors Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow tell the story of a small town in Italy called Monza, which barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved fishbowls. The town council said it was cruel to the fish to give them such a distorted view of reality. This, however, begs the question: "How do we know that the reality we perceive is true? The goldfish is seeing a version of reality that is different from ours, but can we be sure it is any less real?" (Hawking and Mlodinow, 2010).

Since Einstein, Hawking and others who have worked on black holes and the origins of the universe have tried to reconcile Einstein's gravitational and quantum physics into one theory. String theory has been the most promising, but there are at least five different permutations with each overing a different range of situations in time and space.

Scientists acknowledge that no theory to date is completely accurate about everything- there are simply too many variables that we must allow for "successive approximations" which, over time, evolve into more and more accurate predictions as our general knowledge increases. Because of this, some physicists believe that it is a mistake to confuse theoretical models with the "true" nature of reality, but say that these same series of approximations will never end in the actual truth, something also expressed by Einstein (Pais, Chapter 17).

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).