Tag: theory of everything



And So We Patiently Wait for Science to Discard the Real World Out There

            ‘We all agree that your theory is crazy.  The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.” Niels Bohr Modern physics is at a crossroads. Since the time of Einstein, it has pursued a quest to unify the laws of physics using a naïve realist or materialist approach.  This viewpoint holds that there is a real world independent of the scientific theorist, that ultimate reality is a material thing (matter) rather than a mind, and that the mind has no influence on the world.  Most theorists likely assume that discarding the realist perspective is too crazy. And that’s the problem: modern science will not be able to unify the laws of science working within the box of materialism.  Instead, as might be expected, it will need to go outside the box to arrive at a unified theory Front-page announcements such...

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The Trouble with Physics and Realism

The mind calls out for a third theory to unify all of physics, and for a simple reason, Nature is in an obvious sense “unified. .  .  But in both quantum theory and general relativity, we encounter predictions of physically sensible quantities becoming infinite. This is likely the way that nature punishes impudent theorists who dare to break her unity.                                                                          Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics              In The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin presents a powerful critique of the state of modern physics.   http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/  The cause of the “trouble with physics” is that the two leading theories of physics— quantum theory and the general theory of relativity (i.e., gravity) — are mutually incompatible.  The standard explanation for this incompatibility is that quantum physics, with its wave-particle duality and uncertainty principle, governs the world of the very small, while gravity, which by definition is proportional to mass, governs the...

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