I get constantly asked if I could please comment
on other people’s theories of everything.
That could be Garrett Lisi’s E8 theory or
Eric Weinstein’s geometric unity or Stephen
Wolfram’s idea that the universe is but
a big graph, and so on.
Good, then.
Let me tell you what I think about this.
But I’m afraid it may not be what you wanted
to hear.
Before we start, let me remind you what physicists
mean by a “Theory of Everything”.
For all we currently know, the universe and
everything in it is held together by four
fundamental interactions.
That’s the electromagnetic force, the strong
and the weak nuclear force, and gravity.
All other forces that you are familiar with,
say, the van der Waals force, or muscle force,
or the force that’s pulling you down an
infinite sequence of links on Wikipedia, these
are all non-fundamental forces that derive
from the four fundamental interactions.
At least in principle.
Now, three of the fundamental interactions,
the electromagnetic and the strong and weak
nuclear force, are of the same type.
They are collected in what is known as the
standard model of particle physics.
The three forces in the standard model are
described by quantum field theories which
means, in a nutshell, that all particles obey
the principles of quantum mechanics, like
the uncertainty principle, and they can be
entangled and so on.
Gravity, however, is described by Einstein’s
theory of General Relativity and does not
know anything about quantum mechanics, so
it stands apart from the other three forces.
That’s a problem because we know that all
the quantum particles in the standard model
have a gravitational pull.
But we do not know how this works.
We just do not have a theory to describe how
elementary particles gravitate.
For this, we would need a theory for the quantum
behavior of gravity, a theory of “quantum
gravity,” as it’s called.
We need a theory of quantum gravity because
general relativity and the standard model
are mathematically incompatible.
So far, this is a purely theoretical problem
because with the experiments that we can currently
do, we do not need to use quantum gravity.
In all presently possible experiments, we
either measure quantum effects, but then the
particle masses are so small that we cannot
measure their gravitational pull.
Or we can observe the gravitational pull of
some objects, but then they do not have quantum
behavior.
So, at the moment we do not need quantum gravity
to actually describe any observation.
However, this will hopefully change in the
coming decades.
I talked about this in an earlier video.
Besides the missing theory of quantum gravity,
there are various other issues that physicists
have with the standard model.
Most notably it’s that, while the three
forces in the standard model are all of the
same type, they are also all different in
that each of them belongs to a different type
of symmetry.
Physicists would much rather have all these
forces unified to one, which means that they
would all come from the same mathematical
structure.
In many cases that structure is one big symmetry
group.
Since we do not observe this, the idea is
that the big symmetry would manifest itself
only at energies so high that we have not
yet been able to test them.
At the energies that we have tested it so
far, the symmetry would have to be broken,
which gives rise to the standard model.
This unification of the forces of the standard
model is called a “grand unification”
or a “grand unified theory”, GUT for short.
What physicists mean by a theory of everything
is then a theory from which all the four fundamental
interactions derive.
This means it is both a grand unified theory
and a theory of quantum gravity.
This sounds like a nice idea, yes.
But.
There is no reason that nature should actually
be described by a theory of everything.
While we do need a theory of quantum gravity
to avoid logical inconsistency in the laws
of nature, the forces in the standard model
do not have to be unified, and they do not
have to be unified with gravity.
It would be pretty, yes, but it’s unnecessary.
The standard model works just fine without
unification.
So this whole idea of a theory of everything
is based on an unscientific premise.
Some people would like the laws of nature
to be pretty in a very specific way.
They want it to be simple, they want it to
be symmetric, they want it to be natural,
and here I have to warn you that “natural”
is a technical term.
So they have an idea of what they want to
be true.
Then they stumble over some piece of mathematics
that strikes them as particularly pretty and
they become convinced that certainly it must
play a role for the laws of nature.
In brief, they invent a theory for what they
think the universe should be like.
This is simply not a good strategy to develop
scientific theories, and no, it is most certainly
not standard methodology.
Indeed, the opposite is the case.
Relying on beauty in theory development has
historically worked badly.
In physics, breakthroughs in theory-development
have come instead from the resolution of mathematical
inconsistencies.
I have literally written a book about how
problematic it is that researchers in the
foundations of physics insist on using methods
of theory development that we have no reason
to think should work, and that as a matter
of fact do not work.
The search for a theory of everything and
for grand unification began in the 1980s.
To the extent that the theories which physicists
have come up with were falsifiable they have
been falsified.
Nature clearly doesn’t give a damn what
physicists think is pretty math.
Having said that, what do you think I think
about Lisi’s and Weinstein’s and Wolfram’s
attempts at a theory of everything?
Well, scientific history teaches us that their
method of guessing some pretty piece of math
and hoping it’s useful for something is
extremely unpromising.
It is not impossible it works, but it is almost
certainly a waste of time.
And I have looked closely enough at Lisi’s
and Weinstein’s and Wolfram’s and many
other people’s theories of everything to
be able to tell you that they have not convincingly
solved solve any actual problem in the existing
fundamental theories.
And I’m not interested to look any closer,
because I don’t also want to waste my time.
But I don’t like commenting on individual
people’s theories of everything.
I don’t like it because it strikes me as
deeply unfair.
These are mostly researchers working alone
or in small groups.
They are very dedicated to their pursuit and
they work incredibly hard on it.
They’re mostly not paid by tax money so
it’s really their private thing and who
am I to judge them?
Also, many of you evidently find it entertaining
to have geniuses with their theories of everything
around.
That’s all fine with me.
I get a problem if theories that despite having
turned out to be useless grow to large, tax-paid
research programs that employ thousands of
people, as it has happened with string theory
and supersymmetry and grand unification.
That creates a problem because it eats up
resources and can entirely stall progress,
which is what has happened in the foundations
of physics.
People like Lisi and Weinstein and Wolfram
at least remind us that the big programs are
not the only thing you can do with math.
So, odd as it sounds, while I don’t think
their specific research avenue is any more
promising than string theory, I’m glad they
do it anyway.
Indeed, physics can need more people like
them who have the courage to go their own
way, no matter how difficult.
The brief summary is that if you hear something
about a newly proposed theory of everything,
do not ask whether the math is right.
Because many of the people who work on this
are really smart and they know their math
and it’s probably right.
The question you, and all science journalists
who report on such things, should ask is what
reason do we have to think that this particular
piece of math has anything to do with reality.
“Because it’s pretty” is not a scientific
answer.
And I have never seen a theory of everything
that gave a satisfactory scientific answer
to this question.
Thanks for watching, see you next week.
