Such a theory is a sort of religious quest that has united philosophers, theologians, and scientists, But is it possible? Marcelo Gleiser doesn’t think so:
As Gleiser puts it, “The very process of discovery leads to more unknowns.” And they may be smaller or larger. For example, in 1977, Carl Woese (1928–2012) almost accidentally discovered a Third Kingdom of life, the Archaea — which are neither bacteria nor more complex life forms (eukaryotes). The fifth and sixth [fundamentsal] forces may be out there too.
News, “Physicist: Science, by nature, can’t have a theory of everything” at Mind Matters News (December 6, 2021)
Science is not, at any time in the foreseeable future, going to be all tied down and delivered in a box.
You may also wish to read: Can quantum physics, neuroscience merge as quantum consciousness? Physicist Marcelo Gleiser looks at the pros and cons of current theories. The problem is, if we assume that “the mind is nothing more than the brain,” there may be nothing we can discover about how it works.
and
Does science disprove free will? A physicist says no. Michael Egnor: Marcelo Gleiser notes that the mind is not a solar system with strict deterministic laws. Apart from simple laws governing neurons, we have no clue what laws the mind follows, though it does show complex nonlinear dynamics.
Also: Astronomer: We can’t just assume countless Earths out there. He points out that the Principle of Mediocrity is based on faulty logical reasoning. Marcelo Gleiser notes that the starting point of the Mediocrity Principle assumes countless Earths. That’s not a conclusion from evidence. It’s bad logic.
Takehome: As Marcelo Gleiser puts it, “The very process of discovery leads to more unknowns.” And they may be smaller or larger than our current knowns.
Just skip theories and observe reality.
As to:
Perhaps Marcelo Gleiser would be so kind as to tell us exactly what experiments have vetted the, ahem, ‘theory’ of evolution before it was accepted?
Indeed far from being a ‘theory’, Darwinism functions more as an ‘anti-theory’, “called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong.”
Darwinian evolution, (contrary to what Marcelo Gleiser has apparently falsely been led to believe), simply does not qualify as a scientific theory, i.e. as a hard science.
,,, Indeed, Darwinian evolution is more to be classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscience, even as a ‘blind-faith’ religion for atheists, than it is to be classified as a hard ‘theory’ of science that was ‘vetted by experiments’ before it was accepted.
Darwin himself admitted that his theory was quote unquote “grievously hypothetical, and large parts are by no means worthy of being called induction.”
Adam Sedgwick himself was nothing less than scathing of Darwin ignoring the inductive methodology of the scientific method., (i.e. experimentation)
And to this day, Darwinists still have no experimental research that would establish Darwin’s theory as being a true scientific theory,
Verse:
As to:
The “Platonic perfection’ reached by our current theories of science kind of throws a big ole monkey wrench in his belief that current theories can be ‘updated’. There is simply no experimental ‘anomalies’ in current theories, (as there were experimental ‘anomalies’ with Newton’s theory of gravity), that might give someone a toehold in which one might be able to eventually ‘update’ our current theories.
Ever since modern science was born in medieval Christian Europe, science has had a history of looking for ‘platonic perfection’, and assuming the Mind of God to be behind that ‘platonic perfection’. That is to say, that science has a history of reaching for perfect agreement between the immaterial mathematics that describe a facet of this universe and the experimental results that measure those mathematical predictions.
Copernicus, (who was heavily influenced by Platonic thinking), imagined (incorrectly) that the planets move in perfect circles (rather than ellipses). Later, Newton, for allowing God could adjust the orbits of the planets, was chastised by Leibniz, (and even Laplace, ‘no nee for that hypothesis’) for having a “very narrow ideas about the wisdom and the power of God.”.. i.e. For having a narrow view of the perfection of God.
And indeed for most of the history of modern science in the Christian west, finding ‘platonic perfection’ for the mathematical descriptions of the universe has been a very elusive goal. This all changed with the discoveries of Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. That is to say, as far as experimental testing will allow, there is no discrepancy to be found between what the mathematical descriptions of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics predict and what our most advanced scientific testing of those predictions are able to measure.
As well, quantum electrodynamics (QED), which is a combination of special relativity and quantum mechanics, also now joins the list of perfect mathematical descriptions of the universe in which we can find no deviation from what the mathematics predict and what our best experimental testing can discern. In other words, as far as we can tell, ‘platonic perfection’ is reached for QED:
As Nima Arkani-Hamed, the discoverer of the amplituhedron, stated “It seems inconceivable that this intricate web of perfect mathematical descriptions is random or happenstance. This mystery must have an explanation.”,,,
Perhaps Nima Arkani-Hamed will someday reach the same conclusion as Einstein and Wigner did and conclude that the explanation must be that such ‘perfect mathematical descriptions’ are a miracle?
Another very important place where ‘platonic perfection’ is now shown to be ‘perfectly reached’ in the universe, (as far as our most precise testing will allow), is for the ‘flatness’ of the universe.
Moreover, this ‘insane coincidence’ of ‘plantonic perfection’ being reached for the axiomatic ‘primitive object’ of the line just so happens to be necessary for us to even be able to practice math and science, (and apply technology in our world), in the first place:
Simply put, if the universe were not ‘ever-so-boringly’ flat (and if the universal constants were not also ‘ever-so-boringly’ constant), but the universe were instead governed by randomness, as atheists presuppose, or governed by some other of the infinitude of ‘platonic topologies’ that were possible, modern science and technology would have never gotten off the ground here on earth.
Nor, if platonic perfection were not present for the flatness of the universe would we have eventually been able to deduce the ‘platonic perfection’ that is revealed in the ‘higher dimensional’ mathematics that lay behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
More interesting still, these findings of ‘platonic perfection’ for the higher dimensional mathematics that lay behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are VERY friendly to overriding Christian presuppositions of life after death as well as the presupposition of God upholding this universe in its continual existence.
Most everyone who is looking for the next scientific theory to superseded the ‘platonically perfect’ theories of relativity and quantum mechanics are looking for a purely mathematical theory in order to do so. Yet mathematics is, for the most part, held to be deterministic and therefore, by default, the Agent Causality of God, or of people, will never be contained within a supposed mathematical ‘theory of everything’. As George Ellis noted in his critique of Max Tegmarks’s book “Our Mathematical Universe”, presupposing that we ourselves can be reduced to a mathematical description “is a view that assigns to mathematical structures a degree of agency that they are not otherwise thought to possess.”
In fact, our ability to devise new mathematical theorems is itself dependent on us having free will and/or agent causality. As the following article notes, “Creating new axioms (in mathematics) and free will are shown to be different aspects of the same phenomena: the creation of new information.”
Thus free will necessarily precedes any mathematical description that we may devise of the universe.
Interestingly, although free will itself is not contained within the equations of quantum theory itself, free will is, none-the-less, necessary for us to properly understand how the equations of quantum mechanics actually work.
As Steven Weinberg, an atheist, explains, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications in our quest to find the supposed ‘theory of everything’.
Specifically, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders,,,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”
December 2021
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/in-time-for-american-thanksgiving-stephen-meyer-on-the-frailty-of-scientific-atheism/#comment-741599
Video and Verse:
Forget a theory of everything. We just need an explanation for the phenomenon that spawned the concept of dark matter. Link to article on galaxy that isn’t playing by the rules: https://www.cnet.com/news/mysterious-galaxy-without-dark-matter-puzzles-astronomers/
EDTA, not to be too picky, but, uhh, your article is conflating Dark Matter with Dark Energy.
per your article,
Dark ENERGY is held to be “the invisible force making the cosmos spread out.”
Whereas Dark MATTER is held to be “a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe.”,,,
BA77,
Yes, it’s not the most technically precise article. Hopefully the scientists behind it know what they are talking about.
Perhaps CNET should stick to technology and not try branching out into science.
As others have pointed out, “dark energy” is the repulsive force hypothesized to account for the observation that the more distant galaxies are the faster they seem to be moving away from us. “Dark matter” is hypothesized to account for the observation that the visible matter of galaxies is not sufficient to exert the gravitational force necessary to hold them together. There has to be something else there that we can’t see to provide the additional mass, that something else being “dark matter”.
Seversky remarks that, “Perhaps CNET should stick to technology and not try branching out into science.”
And perhaps Seversky should take his own advice and refrain from science until he can be fair towards the empirical evidence?
First off, atheists have no direct observational evidence that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are even real particles in the first place, and that they are not merely figments of their imagination.
As far as observational science is concerned, both Dark Matter and Dark Energy are simply ‘invisible’ to direct experimental observation.
Verse:
This is not the first time that Atheistic Materialists have had to invent ‘invisible’ particles out of thin air in order to ‘explain away’ a finding in science.
For instance, Atheistic Materialists also invented the ‘inflaton’, the “graviton’, and “supersymmetric particles’ out of thin air.
Moreover, neither Dark Matter nor Dark Energy, via their fine tuning, offer any support for the atheist’s belief that the universe is the result of some mindless random quantum fluctuation.
As the following articles explain, Dark Matter “is ultimately one of the reasons for the existence of life on Earth” and also represents, “fine-tuning in the extreme,”
And the fine tuning of Dark Energy makes the problem that atheists have with the “fine tuning in the extreme” of Dark Matter pale in comparison.
Specifically, Dark Energy, (also known as the ‘cosmological constant’), is fine tuned to a staggering 1 part in 10^120. (For comparison sake, the universe is held to have ‘only’ 10^80 particles in it.)
At the 6:09 minute mark of the following video, Hugh Ross comments on the ‘disturbing implications’ that “dark energy”, i.e. the cosmological constant’, has given atheistic astrophysicists
And here is the ‘disturbing implications’ paper from the atheistic astrophysicists, that Dr. Ross referenced in the preceding video, (that was withdrawn because of mounting evidence for a Cosmological Constant (Dark Energy)), that speaks of the ‘disturbing implications’ of the finely tuned expanding universe (1 in 10^120 cosmological constant).
In short, the implications of Dark Energy were ‘disturbing’ for them since it quote-unquote “would have required a miracle” and the result could not have been the result of a quote-unquote, “naturally occurring fluctuation”,
And here are the 9 lines of evidence that Dr. Ross mentioned which came out shortly after the preceding paper was listed as a preprint on the Los Alamos’s website. Evidences which made Dyson, Kleban and Susskind ultimately pull their paper from consideration,, since the evidence became overwhelming that we do indeed live in a universe with a ‘true cosmological constant’,,,
In his video, Dr. Hugh Ross also listed several Bible verses that ‘predicted’, (long before the cosmological constant was even known about), God alone ’’Stretching out the Heavens’.
The following site lists several verses from the Bible that speak of God alone ‘Stretching out the heavens’
The following Bible verse is my favorite out of that group of verses since it, indirectly, refers to the, rather astonishing, miracle of Jesus walking on water.
Thus in conclusion, it is highly ironic, even hypocritical, that Seversky would try to lecture anyone about practicing science properly since Seversky himself (via his Atheistic presuppositions), adamantly, refuses to practice science properly and to follow the scientific evidence to where it leads.