2 - Theories of Everything

Summary

Introduction

Despite the topicality of Theories of Everything in the literature of science and its popular chronicles, they are at root a new edition of something very old indeed. If we cast our eyes over a range of ancient mythological accounts of the world we soon find that we have before us the first Theories of Everything. Their authors composed elaborate stories in which there was a place for everything and everything had its place. These were not in any modern sense scientific theories about the world, but tapestries within which the known and the unknown could be inter-woven to produce a single meaningful picture in which the authors could place themselves with a confidence born of their interpretation of the world around them. In time, as more things were discovered and added to the stories, so they became increasingly contrived and complicated. Moreover, whilst these accounts aimed at great breadth when assimilating perceived truths about the world into a single coherent whole, they were totally lacking in depth. That is, in the ability to extract more from their story than what was put into it in the first place. Modern scientific theories about the world place great emphasis upon depth — the ability to predict new things and explain phenomena not incorporated in the specification of the theory initially.