Talk:Theory of everything/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Paragraph (wrongly?) deleted a year ago

I've been tracking down and reverting changes made by 202.138.119.193 over several scattered pages, and the only one left is this deleted paragraph. It looks to me like this deletion was not warranted and should be reverted, but the article has changed a lot since then, so I'm unsure of what the correct course of action would be. Fbriere 00:02, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I put that one back near the beginning of the page, at the end of the introduction. -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 19:42, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The final theory/mark McCutcheon

This section reads like blatant advertising, and lacks NPOV. I say, remove it. The crackpot pseudoscientific theory doesn't merit attention to begin with. Anyone agree?Atraxani 08:12, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I take it everyone agrees. I'm going to remove the section. Atraxani 20:18, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I object, Atraxani. The section on McCuthcheon's Final Theory should be restored. McCutcheon's Theory may be scientific garbage; that is irrelevant. It is also not for you, me, or Wikipedia to judge. McCuthcheon's Theory deserves inclusion because it is A) Explicitly a Theory of Everything, B) It is published (therefore its existence and nature are publicly verifiable, and C) it is of public interest (as evidenced by the fact that copies of the book have been sold and a newspaper article has been written about the book.
You offer no evidence of the lack of neutral POV in the section as listed. The section was in fact neutral - it simply reported the claims that McCutcheon's book makes. The section cited a verifiable source (McCutcheon's web site) for this information. It is not required that the section attempt to refute McCutcheon in order to be considered neutral. In fact, it would violate neutrality to attempt to refute McCutcheon, though it would be appropriate (but not required) to include criticisms of McCutcheon that appear in other, verifiable sources. Your claim that the section "read like blatant advertising" is utterly unsupported and moreover false. There are no testimonials, epithets of aggrandizement (e.g., "great", "wonderful", "best ever") or other rhetorical strategies used that are uniquely characteristic of advertising. There is further, no ordering information, no price, no publisher listed, no book retailer listed, no link to a book retailer, and indeed no indication that the book is even for sale. The section makes no claims about the quality, veracity, interest, or merit (scientific or otherwise), or value of the book (claims that would presumably be required for "advertising"). I have restored the section. Do not remove it until you present a justification for doing so. If you wish to make MINOR revisions to enhance the neutrality of the section, do so, but do not distort the substance of McCutcheon's theory. --146.201.98.90 22:12, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia once had an article on the theory, but it was deleted. Reasons, details, here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/Expansion_theory . The section read like an advertizement. It mentioned McCutcheon 8 times, said nothing about the assertions of the theory other than the obvious buzzwords and ended with a convenient link to the author's site. It isn't simply my opinion that the theory is incorrect, it's the understood consensus of the scientific community.The fact that the theory is garbage is not irrelevant. There are a plethora of sensationalist pseudoscientific theories like this plaguing the internet that are not important enough to merit attention in wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Importance Atraxani 09:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Re: the above: You have failed completely to respond to my arguments. I am not concerned with nor will I read the previous debate re: McCutcheon, which is irrelevant to the present question at issue. You criticize the section for mentioning McCutcheon 8 times!? The section is ABOUT McCutcheon's theory. It only mentions McCutcheon in the context of saying that McCutcheon makes certain claims in his theory (and one breif mention of McCutcheon's educational background, which is certainly of interest to many who would be interested in the theory itself). Your reference to buzzwords is bizarre. Buzzwords? The section simply explained some aspects of what McCutcheon's theory actually claims (the subject of the section!) Your labeling some of McCutcheon's words "buzzwords" is quite arbitray. And I iterate, it is not relevant whether the theory has scientific merit or even whether the theory is rejected by every physicist who ever lived. This article is not a physics textbook. It is an encyclopedia article on the idea of a "theory of everything". McCutcheon offers such a theory (however flawed), the existence of his theory is verifiable (because published), and it is of public interest (it has been reported on in a magazine article). I have restored the section.--71.49.21.45 07:47, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
The section that you restored doesn't discuss the claims of the theory. It mentions that the theory discards special relativity and quantum mechanics and introduces a "new subatomic principle" that explains a number of phenomena. The section doesn't list a single tenet of the theory, but instead lists a series of buzzwords. What good is it to say "new subatomic principle" without, uh, mentioning anything about the principle? What information does the section present that is not included in my own? Unlike your section, my section mentions some of the theory's claims. As it stands now, your section is redundant, uninformative, and you haven't presented any argument for its inclusion. Also, explain why you removed the comment that many scientists consider it to be a form of pseudoscience, and that the theory makes predictions that have been empirically refuted. Atraxani 09:44, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

The new section is better than the original section, so I have allowed the new section largely to stand. However, I have deleted the claim that Expansion Theory is "pseudoscience". As the Pseudoscience article itself makes clear, that term is not rigorously defined. The Pseudoscience article claims that a theory that does not correspond to an already completed experiment would be pseudoscience. By this standard, Einstein's theory of relativity would have been "pseudoscience" when it was first published. Moreover, it is not Wikipedia's role to judge scientific merit.

I didn't write that Expansion Theory is pseudoscience, I wrote that many consider it to be pseudoscience. I wrote that the theory has little to no acceptance within the scientific community. This is arguably fact. The theory has not appeared in any peer reviewed scientific journal, is not part of curriculum at any educational level, and has suffered much attack and criticism from physicists within the scientific community. It's crucial to mention the theories poor acceptance in the article, or we run the risk of distorting the relevance and importance of the theory. Provide a reason why this shouldn't be included.
Re: the pseudoscience article--Where does the pseudoscience article claim that "a theory that does not correspond to an already completed experiment would be pseudoscience" ? The article states that a theory might be pseudoscience if it makes "claims which contradict experimentally established results." -- that's very different. A new theory can and should make new and "risky" predictions that are testable. You're also wrong about relativity. GR predicts that if let go of an apple, it will fall, in correspondence with existing theory. It also predicted the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, which existing theory could not, although the observation was not new. Atraxani 22:31, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
It did say that at one point. I deleted it; I don't know if its there now; I don't care because that entire page should be deleted in my opinion. "A theory that does not correspond to an already completed experiment would be pseudoscience" is also false. Newton's mechanics, for example contradicted experimentally established results for quite a while before that theory was supplanted by Einstein's relativity. The claim made here represents a radical version of falsificationism that does not reflect actual scientific practice. In real science, no theory is ever perfect, theories are not immediately dismissed upon the finding of contradictory evidence, and competing theories may coexist, each having different strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, previously scientific theories do not become pseudoscience even if they have been extensively falsified and dismissed by the scientific community. Newton's mechanics, for example, is STILL not pseudoscience even though it has been supplanted in large part by more sophisticated theories. Ptolemy's astronomy is STILL not pseudoscience to this day. It is science because it makes empirical predictions that are IN PRINCIPLE falsifiable. The only coherent meaning of pseudoscience is non-science (which could be anything from religion to philosophy to incoherent rambling) that proponents claim to be science. Therefore the label of pseudoscience depends not only on the nature of the ideas themselves but on the claims that someone makes about the ideas (that they are scientific). Therefore nothing can be, in and of itself, pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is a mere concept; it belongs in the dictionary; it does not merit an encyclopedia entry. Particular examples of pseudoscience may merit encyclopedia entries, if they are of general interest and their nature is verifiable.


You are right about the perihelion of Mercury, but that is beside the point. Even if Einstein's theory had failed to solve any particular existing anomalies, that would not have prevented it from being a scientific theory. (It may have prevented it from gaining the attention of the scientific community, but that is a sociological issue, not an epistemological one.) Now, it is true that relativity's ability to explain the perihelion added to the theory's scientific merit, but it was not strictly necessary to qualify the theory as scientific. A theory can be scientific, yet completely false. Scientific theory is simply falsifiable empirical claims or that from which such can be logically deduced. This definition is completely independent of any historical context (such as what observations happen to have been made), as philosophical definitions should be.


Now, I have removed the following text from the expansion theory section:
"in that it [McCuthcheon's Final Theory] predicts yet doesn't explain Action at a distance, violates its own conservation laws, and fails to live up to experimental data or"
Rather than assert these things, you should report what recognized expert has made this claim and cite a verifiable source. (Note that since this section is about McCutcheon's theory, McCutcheon is not required to be a recognized expert and yet his critics are. McCutcheon's ideas are of interest in themselves; other peoples ideas about McCutcheon's ideas must meet a higher standard of merit.)
"concur with the laws of common sense"
The above critique applies to this remark, as does the additional criticism that it is widely known that the laws of physics are not accountable to the laws of commonsense. Therefore you would have to cite respected expert sources justifying not only that this claim is true but explaining why McCutcheon's theory is held to this standard while other physics theories are widely believed not to be held to it.
Do not break apart other people's messages. If you need to, just quote the message, but not in the format you did. It was causing severe and unreadable page widening, so I reformatted.
I cited McCutcheon's website, where he made these claims. I originally stated that The [Final] Theory argues that current scientific theory is inconsistent and incomplete in that it predicts yet doesn't explain Action at a distance, violates its own conservation laws, and fails to live up to experimental data or concur with the laws of common sense.
I can defend this statement:
1)..."inconsistent"
McCutcheon writes "How can a fridge magnet cling against gravity endlessly without draining a power source? It can't ... fridge magnets are impossible according to today's science."
2)..."incomplete"
McCutcheon says science doesn't have answers for why protons are able to bind in a nucleus, or why freezing water expands, or why light speeds up upon entering a vacuum.
3)..."violates it's own conservation laws"
McCutcheon writes that "Despite the ongoing energy expended by Earth’s gravity to hold objects down and the moon in orbit, this energy never diminishes in strength or drains a power source – in violation of one of our most fundamental laws of physics: the Law of Conservation of Energy.
4)..."concur with the laws of common sense"
McCutcheon writes "Ever heard the one about the astronaut who speeds off in a spaceship, only to return to Earth shortly to find that his twin brother is now an old man? If you thought this concept was very odd when you first heard it, you were right. Not only is it against common sense, but even Einstein's theory, which was used to invent this story, shows that it falls apart upon closer examination." He uses common sense appeals very frequently.
It is clear that your edits have all been unwarranted. You restored the original section without first discussing it, you removed my version without first discussing it, and you have removed that sentence without first discussing. I am reverting your changes. Do not make any more changes without discussing them first.
The pseudoscience article explains that pseudoscience often makes predictions that contradict established experimental data that is predicted by established theories, and your personal opinions are irrelevant. I stated that some scientists have labeled the theory as pseudoscience. That's relevant.Atraxani 04:45, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
  • You know annons who use the imperative tense tend to draw the wrong sort of attention to themselves 146.201.98.89; you might try to use more polite language. DV8 2XL 05:59, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Recent POV edits

I've just reverted a series of edits by Duduong to the "Mainstream physics" section. There is probably a good way to address his apparent concerns about string theory in the article, but these edits as they stand are strongly POV and (to my perhaps biased eye) largely unnecessary here.

First, I don't understand Duduong's isertion of the word "previously" before the statement that string theory is the only current mainstream TOE candidate. If he has another such candidate theory in mind, he should probably mention it here. As it is, he only mentions LQG, which the article already explained is not primarily aimed at being a TOE. Second, his additions seem focused on accusations of laziness or opportunism against string theorists (attributed to unnamed "cynics"), and make the frankly ludicrous claim that calculations in string theory are "easy" (if he finds them so, Duduong has a brilliant career ahead of him). His detailed criticisms of string theory seem most appropriate in the dedicated string theory articles; here, the mention of string theory should be confined to a brief description of its relevance for the TOE project.

Finally, Duduong inserts a full paragraph on the failure of current physical theories to address his personal philosophical concerns with quantum mechanics. (As he points out, many physicists are more or less at peace with the philosophical state of the enterprise.) Again, these concerns are valid and are shared by many others (both professional physicists and laymen), but it's not clear to me that they have anything to do with the notion of a TOE. If someone can make a convincing argument that the philosophical underpinnings of quantum mechanics are relevant here, I'll welcome some comments about them (though even then, I doubt that we need to include a plug for incomplete recent studies of the issue in this article).--Steuard 17:13, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Expert review templete added

I added the expert review templete to the section "other efforts" I'll try to recuirt but I wanted to put that there to make sure people are aware that section could be inaccurate.--Scott3 04:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

What sort of "experts" are you looking for? Experts in mainstream physics, or experts in each listed "other effort" (and in any other "other effort" that we somehow decide merits inclusion), or experts in "physics out of the mainstream" generally (maybe historians of science, in that case, perhaps with a specialty in fringe theories)? (As usual, I still nominate all but the basic summary of "Other Efforts" for "Sections for Deletion", due largely to the difficulty of filtering the countless non-mainstream theories out there.)--Steuard 20:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok I'll remove it and put "Sections for deletion" this is about mainstream physics and not for some guy with no degree in physics who tries to rewrite the laws of physics.Maybe another article but not this one.

Citations + validation needed

@Heim theory: "although some have questioned whether an aerospace engineering prize is a reliable guide to the validity of the underlying theoretical physics".Slicky 02:10, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

"Critics contend that these claims are invalid and that work on Heim theory is flawed in a variety of ways." Section needs a more critic POV, but quotations are needed.Slicky 02:13, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Point taken on the need for citations, or at least on the phrasing of those comments. The first of these is, I think, an important point to make in any discussion of Heim Theory's recent recognition: the fact that said recognition came from a group with no expertise in theoretical physics is crucial in making judgements about its significance. Perhaps there is a more encyclopedic way of raising that issue. Any suggestions?
As for citations regarding flaws in Heim Theory, they will probably be difficult to find. As the theory itself has not been formally published in scientific journals or gathered much attention from the mainstream physics community, comments on it have probably not been frequently published either. Heim Theory's lack of publication itself could be seen as a comment by mainstream science; the article's current implication that only the unfamiliarity and complexity of Heim Theory has prevented its publication may unfairly obscure that point. (Speaking of which, if the current article is going to talk about a large number of "recent papers" on Heim Theory, it should make it clear that those papers have not in fact passed scientific peer review.)
You could, of course, include Prof. Carroll's comment as cited below. In general, physicists don't spend a lot of time on detailed debunkings of theories they consider to be crackpot material. It's even possible that the half dozen or so major concerns that I've raised on Talk pages here are the most careful consideration that Heim Theory has gotten from mainstream physics in some time (most of my physicist friends think I'm too sympathetic toward this sort of thing).--Steuard 03:48, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
Well my take is that speculations should be excluded. It is better to cut Heim down to the minimum rather than be too positive or too negative or speculative. The problem is that his theory certainly still merits it`s place. As for crackpot theories the same hold true for string theory, unless you dear stuard have already narrowed down your POV to only see string theoriests in the physics community anymore. But believe me the physics community is greater than that, and just because i have no intentions to major in string theory doesn`t make me any less a future physicist. I do have great respect for you, except your extreme bias towards string theory, then again i find it hard to ask you to be less motivated about your work. Well it is a double edge sword, but WHAT I CERTAINLY CAN ASK you to restrain from writing if you cannot maintain an half assed attempt of NPOV. Because that is really all that is required, no one is NPOV, but together the more experts working on an article the more angled it becomes to a point where it reaches a "tepid form" of neutrality. Then again given the popularity of TOE in populace, and considering how many edits this page gets i should rather thank you for at least maintaing article quality to some extend.Slicky 05:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to merge article with Unified Field Theory

Shouldn't this article be merged with Unified Field Theory? I do not see how they differ in topic and scope. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.109.156.34 (talk • contribs) on 03:05, 21 May 2006.

As mentioned above, my understanding was that the term "unified field theory" refers to a specific (though fairly broad) class of ToE: those implemented using the mathematical framework of quantum field theories (hence the name). I've posted a request for clarification to the WikiProject Physics talk page. --Christopher Thomas 05:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Is a General Relativity ToE accepted as a useful approach?

It seems to me that there is a contradiction within this article. The article confidently states that:

The only mainstream candidate for a theory of everything at the moment is superstring theory / M-theory; current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim

Yet a few paragraphs away we find it stated that:

There have been several attempts to advance the general theory of relativity as a theory of everything. As mentioned above, Einstein was responsible for one of these: in collaboration with Rosen he attempted to model particles as tiny wormholes, hence the term Einstein-Rosen Bridge.... Such theories face a number of hurdles: the creation of wormholes changes the topology of spacetime by creating a new "handle" which implies violations of causality (see Hadley [2]), and the general theory of relativity predicts its own breakdown at a Gravitational singularity by theorems of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose. A recent effort to surmount this hurdle notes that the equivalence principle can be applied along curves rather than at a single point (Iliev [3]), ....

Should, then, we revise the statement to say something like:

There are currently two mainstream candidates for a theory of everything. The candidate with the most attention by professional physicists is superstring theory / M-theory. (current research on loop quantum gravity may eventually play a fundamental role in a TOE, but that is not its primary aim.) However, another active field of research - pursued by a smaller group of professional physicists - is to use Einstein's general theory of relativity as a theory of everything....

Is this wording more accurate? Or are the number of people following the latter GR path so small as to be not worth stating in this fashion? Any thoughts would be appreciated? RK 15:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

As a graduate student in high energy theory, I certainly haven't heard of any substantial work on this "GR alone as a TOE" approach. I'm not sure what evidence exists to support the idea at all, to be honest. Certainly the vast majority of people working on LQG (which is just aiming to be quantized GR) don't expect it to explain anything beyond gravity on its own. If the "GR as a TOE" folks were making a substantial impact on the field, I would expect that attitude to be different. If anyone has substantial references to the contrary, please do share them, but I would be tempted to refrain from mentioning any ongoing work on the "GR as a TOE" idea under the "no original research" policy here.--Steuard 03:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

General relativity is not a candidate for a Theory of Everything. One of the goals of a TOE is to provide a unified description of fundamental interactions. Einstein and Schrodinger spent part of their time trying to develop a unified field theory that would unify electromagnetism with gravity. This Einstein-Schrodinger theory isn't part of General Relativity and it also doesn't unify physical interactions. It exploits some useful analogies between the tensor fields governing gravity and electromagnetism, but doesn't truly unify them. GR and Einstein-Schrodinger Theory say nothing whatsoever about nuclear interactions. There is no such thing as "GR as TOE", because GR is only a theory of gravity. Tomm

My understanding of the idea being discussed here (which I'll admit I hadn't heard of before in any serious context) was as a notion that various topological effects in gravity alone might give rise to particles and the other forces. As I said above, I'm not aware of any mainstream work on such a model, and it goes against the general understanding of what GR describes by physicists in related fields.--Steuard 13:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


Thanks much for this info, Steuard. So here is the big question: Aside from superstring theory (and related M-theory, branes, etc.) are there any approaches in physics to the theory of anything? Or are superstrings the only feasible path actually being studied by professional physicists? I am aware of Woit's "Not Even Wrong" website and upcoming book, but surely he isn't raging against superstrings without proposing a few alternate paths, right? (Maybe not...) I haven't been able to find any info at all on physicists working on ToE's outside of superstrings, so if this is the case (for the moment?) then the article should reflect this. Maybe we should remove the GR topology, under our policy against No Original Research, and not include it again unless someone can offer peer-reviewed references (or at least a few ArXive papers) on this topic. RK 00:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Not Even Wrong
Generally speaking, my impression is that most physicists who disapprove of string theory think that we're just not in a position to develop a TOE right now (due largely to a lack of experimental data). We string theorists tend to sympathize with their concerns, but we're still optimistic about string theory and experiment eventually making contact (presumably in some indirect way).
I know that there are efforts to include matter and the other forces in theories based on LQG, but even then I'm not sure that those efforts are really aiming at complete unification (I think they're just trying to show that matter and interactions can live in an LQG universe). Given that strings and LQG are the only two major efforts toward a theory of quantum gravity today (I recently heard a reference to an approach called "CDT", but I know nothing about it; it sounds quite young and undeveloped at this point), and that any TOE must include quantum gravity, I think that leaves string/M-theory as the only mainstream TOE candidate.--Steuard 17:26, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Marxian theoretical contribution to the Theory of Everything. The Theory of Everything it at its outset a silly sounding concept. But thinkers throughout history have searched for and explored the idea. Is it a pattern perceived in the physical sciences, the social sciences or even a growing sense that there is a growing awareness in our time that there are patterns, scientifically based, that patterns are emerging in our understanding of our history and present condition and our future? This contribution intendeds, to explore Scientific Marxian concepts towards a theory of everything. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by John gowland (talk • contribs) .

Artist's impression

Wikipedia is not an art gallery. The picture shown as no relationship whatsover to string theory. I'll remove it again. --Pjacobi 18:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I do agree that the "impression" has nothing to do with the physical strings. It may however be useful if someone starts an article on moldy donuts. Friendly Neighbour 19:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)