Philosophy Discussion Forums

HZY wrote: ToE can never be because it permanently awaits the next discovery.

This is exactly the point I'm trying to make. We've had socks that went missing years ago and we're still trying to discover what happened to them.

Atreyu wrote:As far as whether or not it will ever be "worked out" by modern science, I would say no. But it's possible to have one, because it already exists and was developed long ago, only it is not known by modern science, nor will it ever be because they don't know where to look for it. Nor will they ever have the inclination to do so, since they will naturally always be under the very strong impression that they can arrive at it by themselves.

Hi Atreyu, interesting post!

Can you point us to the TOE that already exists and was developed long ago?

Philophile wrote:Is a ToE fundamentally possible?

I think yes, even without us having a complete mapping of interrelationships of Universe. What follows what Ive deduced from my experiences. It is best to think of this cosmic hierarchy as a table of contents, of a book entitled "U"niverse: The Cosmic Hierarchy.

"U"niverse: The Cosmic Hierarchy
....1a} metaphysical-1, mind/intellect/concept ergo concepts of God, Universe, Space etc.....
........spirit-1 aka spirit-of-intent........

-----line---of---demarcation---------------------------------------------------

...1b} macro-infinite non-occupied space aka metaphysical-2

....1c} finite, occupied space Universe aka UniVerse

2) Universe: Occupied Space aka God, Cosmos, UniVerse etc....

....2a} fermions and bosons
......aka observed physical/reality aka spirit-2.........

......2b} gravity
...........aka quasi-physical or metaphysical-3 and spirit-3......

......2c} dark energy
.........aka quasi-physical or metaphysical-4 and spirit-4...........

I believe that I've discovered the fundamentally basic mechanisms for our observed time, gravity and dark energy and show them geometrically. This is not to say Ive mapped any or all of the interrelating parts of our finite, occupied space Universe.

I'm only saying I believe I've discovered some conceptual guidelines of observed time, gravity and dark energy.

r6

ToE generally speaking is possible to tackle, and I have such one. Obviously it's impossible to verify it, because any theory on the universe becomes theory forever, as there is no such experiment to carry it out in order to confirm or deny the given theory. In view of the above, we can only speculate on scientific grounds and choose the most simple, thus most probable theory of everything.

--
I had a dream that was over the moon, but when I woke up, I was still down to earth

Paradigmer wrote:Can you point us to the TOE that already exists and was developed long ago?

To put it briefly, two laws known in ancient times which applied to Everything Everywhere were

1) It takes three forces for any phenomenon to occur, i.e. there are always three forces behind every phenomenon (not just one or two), and
2) All processes will deviate from their original course unless an outside force keeps them straight.

Atreyu: Which historical set of theories of physics are you talking about there? Is it Aristotlean?

It is interesting to study the history of these things because it helps us to think outside the paradigm in which we grew up and reminds us which concepts are actually counter-intuitive. For example, we've all learned the Newtonian idea that an object continues at constant velocity unless acted on by a force (the opposite of your point 2) and it's surprisingly easy, having learnt it at an early age and seen it demonstrated with carefully controlled friction-less environments, to see it as intuitively obvious. But history shows that it clearly isn't.

If only the ancient Greeks had air hockey.

Philophile wrote: ↑February 3rd, 2015, 7:53 am A theory of everything (ToE) is a proposed theory which combines consistently the two well known and well verified theories in physics of general relativity and quantum field theory. If one could find such a theory, it could help understand questions of dark matter and black holes, as well provide the most fundamental description of our universe. There are two major candidates for a ToE, string theory (or M-theory) and loop quantum gravity. Both, however, still have issues, even after being worked on for 30+ years, as well as no experimental verification. Recent experiments at the LHC (large hadron collider) don't help: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/science/2013/08/18/1-string-theory-takes-a-hit-in-latest-experiments.html

My thoughts are that there are three possible reasons why such a ToE has not been discovered. Either scientist are not trying hard enough (doubtful), we need to wait for more data (could take a generation), or more interestingly, such a ToE is fundamentally impossible. This is the question I wish to discuss here:

Is a ToE fundamentally possible?

I propose there is something fundamental about the universe which is unknowable. Given we live in the universe, and take measurements within it, we interact with the universe. The only completely closed system is the universe itself. Thus one could only completely understand the universe by observing it from outside the universe. Since this is not possible, neither is a ToE.

Or is it that a current candidate for a ToE will get closer and closer to the physical reality of the universe as it gets modified and changed, but only reach an exact description as time goes to infinity?

I've tried numerous times to contact people like Verlinde, Tamara D., Rovei, Carroll, etc. In vain. Only Harari was kind enough to reply. It seems so obvious to me what quarks and leptons are made of (and the Higgs particle, for that matter). It seems so obvious what is dark energy and matter. Try to tell that on a physics forum... Instant ban, and the so-called important physicists and cosmologists are just afraid...

Philophile wrote: ↑February 3rd, 2015, 7:53 am I propose there is something fundamental about the universe which is unknowable. Given we live in the universe, and take measurements within it, we interact with the universe. The only completely closed system is the universe itself. Thus one could only completely understand the universe by observing it from outside the universe. Since this is not possible, neither is a ToE.

The late Stephen Hawking had actually said something somewhat similar to that:

Hawking in "Godel and the end of physics" wrote: In the standard positivist approach to the philosophy of science, physical theories live rent free in a Platonic heaven of ideal mathematical models. That is, a model can be arbitrarily detailed, and can contain an arbitrary amount of information, without affecting the universes they describe. But we are not angels, who view the universe from the outside. Instead, we and our models, are both part of the universe we are describing. Thus a physical theory, is self referencing, like in Gödel’s theorem. One might therefore expect it to be either inconsistent, or incomplete. The theories we have so far, are both inconsistent, and incomplete.

Regardless of how it was obtained, in the end, the ToE would still be a document.

What Hawking describes, i.e. a universe that contains a copy of the document describing its own theory, may or may not be a problem.

For example, a program can produce its own source code as an output. Hence the program's interpretation may be itself. This is not necessarily a problem:

Wikipedia on the term "quine" wrote: A quine is a computer program which takes no input and produces a copy of its own source code as its only output. The standard terms for these programs in the computability theory and computer science literature are "self-replicating programs", "self-reproducing programs", and "self-copying programs".

A quine is a fixed point of an execution environment, when the execution environment is viewed as a function transforming programs into their outputs. Quines are possible in any Turing-complete programming language, as a direct consequence of Kleene's recursion theorem.

Even though there may be other reasons why acquiring a copy of the ToE from within the universe would be impossible, I do not believe that the self-referencing nature of such situation would necessarily be a problem.

So, yes, the interpretation of the ToE, i.e. the universe, would contain a copy of itself, i.e. a particular document. How would that lead to a contradiction?