Talk:Theory of everything (philosophy)

Is anything is this article true? I have never come across philosophers working on a "Theory of Everything". Not classical philosophers, not modern philosophers. Indeed, as the article currently stands, the idea isn't even clearly explained at all!

Unless someone can provide references from peer-reviewed journals of philosophy, I would state that this article is a fanciful claim made by someone with physics envy, and should be speedily deleted. RK 16:02, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

(IMPORTANT - To the article's author: Do you have the Nicholas Rescher Collected Papers Vol. IX? I need that book but it's really expensive for me to buy it here in Argentina. Please share this valuable resource if you can. ThanksFilosofia 00 (talk) 00:14, 14 November 2017 (UTC)!!)

I've not heard the term used to describe philosophical schools as the article suggests. But, then again, in my neck of the woods calling something a "Theory of everything" is an insult. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 20:02, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy"

Proposed deletion

Peer-reviewed journals have not always existed. Classic and pre-modern philosophers did not have them, so that cannot be the sole criterion for acceptability. The article was tagged for uncontested deletion on July 28, 2006. Let's give the proponents some time to dig up references before summary deletion. --Blainster 18:52, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

No journals have not always existed, but the term "theory of everything" has been around for a lot less time than journals (if I'm not mistaken it dates from the 1980s?). For example, we do not read of Plato referring to his "theory of everything". I am awfully sorry, but this term is complete bunk. Utter nonsense: someone's misguided idea: it is not an accepted term in philosophy. It seems it was deleted before and popped up again out of nowhere. My worry is that, because people use this website as an encyclopaedia, an information source, they will be misled and taken in by false information. How about I list it for a normal AfD, then? That way, if anyone cares enough about it, they can argue their case there, instead of this lying around for months. It was just rescued at the eleventh hour, anyway. Byrgenwulf 19:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Though the term does not have a long history, it is now widely used, and we should not be surprised if philosophers pick it up and apply it to longstanding themes. What we need to determine as editors is not the truth or value of a concept, but whether it is really being publicly discussed and not just the creation of a zealous editor. --Blainster 19:16, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• About 56 Google hits for "philosophical theory of everything" (to weed out the physics pages), with most of those being Wikipedia mirrors.
• ["Theory of everything" philosophy] on Google gets about 233 000, but that's not saying much, because many pages about physics "theories of everything" would probably mention the word "philosophy" somewhere.
• None of my reference works on philosophy mention the concept, and nor does Stanford's Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
• At absolute best, being maximally charitable, it is a neologism by Ken Wilber. But if we are to include an article on every neologism by every writer, Wikipedia's servers would be jammed up from Finnegans Wake alone; I know Wikipedia is not paper, but nor is it an indiscriminate source of information.
• This Wilber's entry talks about his "theory of everything" anyway.
• I would be very surprised indeed if any professional philosophers appropriated the term for serious use, since it has already accrued such a negative connotation in the physics community for being a flytrap for cranks: it would be like physicists adopting the slogan "Flat world" if they believe that spacetime is not curved.

In all, there really is nothing to suggest that this is anything other than some Ken Wilber fan who has the wrong end of the stick wrote this up and posted it here. Byrgenwulf 19:41, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Google books lists 646 hits for ["theory of everything" philosophy -wilber], which is actually a significant number. The number of GoogleBooks hits for a particular phrase tends to be a small fraction of Google hits. It's possible that the term was/is actually derogatory ("this is not a theory of everything"), and that Wilber's use of it as the title of one of his books ("A Brief Theory of Everything") was an attempt at ironic wit. I would welcome a re-working of the article to more accurately reflect its actual usage. — goethean ॐ 20:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

193,000 Google hits for ["theory of everything" philosophy -wilber -wiki] — goethean ॐ 20:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that earlier (I found 233 000 including Wilber and wiki), but my point is that many pages about physics theories of everything would use the term "philosophy" somewhere, so that isn't a reliable indicator. Byrgenwulf 20:26, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Paging through the GoogleBooks hits, I don't get the impression that the hits refer to physics theories. — goethean ॐ 20:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Hit #2 is actually a book called Philosophy of Biology: "Although the allure of a unified theory of everything is undeniable, it is important to realize that evolutionary biology has much more modest pretensions." They're contrasting a good theory in biology with the grand aspirations of physicists, i.e., talking about TOE in the physics sense. Then comes John Gribbin's The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything ("Unless you have a taste for philosophy, you don't have to worry too much about the uncertain and chancy aspects of quantum theory in your own life") which is clearly physics. On the next page one finds Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science, Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale, Schrödinger's Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics and The Philosophy of Physics. Also, Gowans's Philosophy of the Buddha mentions the term in a manifestly physics-related context: "Moreover, contemporary 'string theory,' a theory that promises to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics into a 'theory of everything' [...]". The density of physics references and people philosophizing (loosely) about physics seems about constant in later pages. Anville 21:00, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Well-formed formulae

The logical expressions which have just appeared are not well formed formulae in conventional predicate calculus; I realise that they do make sense, yes, but constancy, please. Also, rigour demands the use of brackets in certain places to avoid ambiguity with regards to the associativity of terms. Below are some reformulations, which I would suggest using:

• Principle of sufficient reason: $\forall t\exists t'(E(t',t))$
• Comprehensiveness: $\forall t(E(T^{*},t))$
• Finality: $\forall t(E(t,T^{*})\rightarrow (t\equiv T^{*}))$
• Noncircularity: $\neg \exists t(E(t,t))$

However, even these assertions are not self consistent, since there is a conflation of "fact" and "theory"; also T* here is a free variable, which might generate a number of problems when manipulating the expressions (should anyone be bothered to do so). In short, they have about the same level of rigour as a bowl of jelly and custard.

Now I understand that the job of a TOE includes explaining itself, but this introduces all manner of strange loops. In short, it strikes me as nonsense, but since this Rescher chap evidently published it, I suppose it might be included. Byrgenwulf 22:52, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I just changed the article so the reformulations of the expressions are used. I hope this isn't a problem. I tend to be a little pedantic about things like this. Byrgenwulf 23:01, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The expressions are straight out of "The Price of an Ultimate Theory". Predicate calculus says that 'In practice, if P is a relation of valence 2, we often write "a P b" instead of "P a b"', and to me, x E y more clearly conveys "x explains y" than does E(x,y). Also, Rescher uses = in finality, not ≡. With respect to explanation, he seems to rank a theory as a kind of higher-level fact, so that mundane facts are explained by theories, which are in turn explained by higher-level theories: "Somewhat like hydroelectric power, explanatory power cascades downwards to ever lower levels of theoretical generality."

Now that the article has been rewritten and sourced, can we remove the "original research", "unencyclopedic", and "not verified" tags? Also, inasmuch as the introduction to pseudophilosophy cites Rescher for a definition of the term, it seems a bit peculiar to include it under "See also" in an article covering his work. Tim Smith 03:10, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you want to put the predicates as xPy you can - however, the brackets after the implication arrow ---> must remain (if I put them in the right place, of course, that's the problem with leaving out brackets). The equals and equivalent signs mean exactly the same, it is just a matter of making the notation here consistent with, say, the article on predicate calculus; that's also the reason I changed the predicates to P(x,y).

I realise that this Rescher is treating theories as some manner of "higher fact". Only, it is well known that mixing levels like this leads to strange loops: Russell's paradox, for one. But he evidently has some manner of circularity requirements, to try to overcome the difficulties; anyway, to quote Wheeler I am skeptical as Hell, but as long as it's referenced it should be fine.

As for the tags at the top, I must say first off that that is a splendid fix-up job you did. I would say the unencyclopaedic tag can go, and "not verified". However, the article could still do with a bit more structure, so leave the "cleanup" tag for now, I think.

If I might ask, does Rescher actually use the term "theory of everything"? Byrgenwulf 06:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes. He opens "The Price of an Ultimate Theory" by calling the vision for a TOE in physics a form of the "dream of an ultimate theory that 'explains it all'" which "has enchanted philosophers and scientists throughout the centuries", and then uses the term in his analysis; for example:

And so the upshot on what is clearly the most direct and natural construction of the ultimacy that a 'theory of everything' is to exhibit, is that two crucial features are principally involved in such an 'ultimate' or 'final' theory...

The article on predicate calculus uses ≡ once that I see, and = many times. I favor = because it's what Rescher uses, and because it's more familiar. There's no "cleanup" tag on the article; what do you mean? Tim Smith 08:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me, Mr Smith, I think I'm stark raving mad, and I am frantically busy with other work at the moment: remove the "unencyclopaedic" etc. tags (for now) and add a "cleanup" tag, because the article does need cleanup (I just assumed there would be a tag for that). I couldn't give a damn about the "equals" or "equivalent" sign, so long as brackets appear so as to delineate exactly to which terms the implication operator applies: that is the important bit with reference to well-formed formulae. There are many ways of writing logical expressions, but the truly important thing, and the wonderful thing about formal logic, is that the expressions leave no doubt as to their interpretation (especially in the absence of verbal commentary!).

But if Rescher uses the term in inverted commas, is he not being metaphorical and/or tongue in cheek as he refers to it? Because if so, then surely the term is not a serious philosophical term? Byrgenwulf 18:56, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The quotes acknowledge the term's outside origin in physics, and perhaps qualify its pretensions. But he uses it and its acronym many times, sometimes without quotes, and clearly takes the idea seriously, having written two papers on it. I've removed the tags and attempted a cleanup. Tim Smith 09:54, 9 August 2006 (UTC)