Is there a world formula?

The big dream of physicists, Stefanie Schramm writes in Zeit Wissen, is to capture the universe in its totality in a formula that would fit on a T-shirt. This entails the attempt to unify theories in physics in such a manner that only one would remain: the “theory of everything”. More recently, however, researchers in physics have been somewhat sobered, it seems — she quotes Freeman Dyson’s remark that “The ground of physics is covered with corpses of unifying theories”.

At present two schools of thought are engaged in a quarrel about the correct approach. These are String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), and neither seems to have surpassed the sphere of the speculative in so far as both lack “conclusive” evidence that they are on the right track.

Essentially, LQG, as it is known, is a quantum theory of gravity (or of space-time), which attempts to bring quantum mechanics and general relativity together. If I understand this complex (and very specialised) theoretical field correctly in broad terms, it entails interpreting the space in which all temporal physical phenomena exist in quantum terms. It is impossible for me as a non-physicist to understand exactly what this means, except to say that it seems to me to suggest the hypothesis that physical (and perhaps other kinds of) phenomena are “produced” or “created” by quantum relationships (or “quantisation” of gravity).

Keeping in mind that one of the upshots of the quantum mechanics developed by Heisenberg, Bohr and Planck is that humans change nature by the very fact of observing it, that is, that the physical world is only describable as the result of an interaction between human beings and “something” out there, it seems to me that LQG is in the process of extending this insight to mathematics or “quantum geometry” as an instance of such interaction, showing, in the process, how the physical world can be seen as emerging from this.

Schramm’s article, as well as several other sources that I consulted, points out that the claims of LQG are controversial in the physics community, and despite the fact that their “core results” include stringent instances of mathematical physics, how these apply to physical phenomena is a matter of speculation.

Moreover, unlike its main contender, String Theory, it does not attempt to unify al physical phenomena under one theoretical umbrella. As Schramm points out, a unifying “world formula” would have to offer an explanation of all elementary particles (whatever they may be called), as well as the forces operating on them. (In this respect contemporary physics has not changed its focus since the time of ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosophers of nature, who attempted to designate precisely the same things — Anaxagoras, for example, claimed there were innumerable, qualitatively different elements, organised by the cosmic force, “nous” or “mind”, and Empedokles named water, fire, earth and air as the primordial elements, either held together by “philia” or “cosmic love”, or broken asunder by “cosmic hatred” or “neikos”.

Those physicists who believe in the possibility of finding a “world formula” presuppose that, at the Big Bang, only one such force operated, which has diversified itself in the form of those forces which are known to scientists today, namely electromagnetism, gravity and weak, as well as strong interaction or force. Of the latter two forces, weak interaction (force) is assumed to function between particles, while strong interaction (perhaps “intra-action”) is seen as holding the quarks and other elementary entities within the particles together.

Forty years ago electromagnetism and weak interaction were theoretically unified, but strong interaction (force) — the strongest of the four fundamental forces — has so far remained outside this theoretical domain, as is the case with gravity as well. In fact, Schramm reminds one, gravity has been rather unwieldy in the process of looking for a world formula — while Einstein accorded it a place in his general theory of relativity (in so far as he demonstrated that even light travelling within and between galaxies is subject to it), it does not appear to have a place in the realm of what is extremely small, where quantum mechanics holds sway.

In light of all this, Schramm reports further, the best candidate for an encompassing theory is String Theory, according to which elementary particles are oscillating or vibrating strings. This has theoretical advantages for understanding the Big Bang, in so far as strings are conceived of as expanding, which would have prevented the contraction of the universe to the zero point. And moreover, in the course of the accompanying mathematical calculations, the need to postulate a gravity-particle, called the graviton, emerged. By means of the acceleration of particles in the Giant Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland, physicists hope to find evidence confirming String Theory, in the guise of “super-symmetrical particles” (whatever that may mean!).

In contrast with String Theory, Loop Quantum Gravity does not work with the assumption of space-time continuity, but regards it as disintegrating into fragments or “crumbs” — something which, if I understand it correctly, militates against the possibility of an encompassing, unifying “theory of everything”. Not surprisingly, therefore, Schramm alludes to Nobel Prize winner Robert Laughlin, who counselled that the possibility of finding a “world formula” should be abandoned, because it is not possible to reduce all phenomena to the same fundamental laws.

“The world formula cemetery”, she concludes “has become even more crowded”. Personally, I believe that the very conceit, that such an all-inclusive theoretical framework can be formulated at all, is a remnant of the modernist belief in a so-called meta-language or meta-narrative in terms of which a wide diversity of phenomena may be understood, and ultimately justified. Experience has taught us that such meta-languages are no different from the languages they were supposed to bind together in explanatory terms — any meta-language is just another language, or, to use Foucault’s (among others’) term, anything claiming to be a meta-discourse, is just another discourse.

Far from justifying relativistic conclusions, however, the discernment of competing language games or discourses at all levels in society, from science to politics, education and religion, places the burden on intellectuals to negotiate a very complex terrain in their attempt to understand how things are interrelated. Small wonder that one of the most vibrant intellectual fields to emerge of late is known as “complexity theory”. As the name indicates, it is a broad, interdisciplinary domain which is predicated on the principle that things are irremediably complex, and cannot readily, simple-mindedly, be reduced to simple relationships or entities.
As an example of such complexity, think of the difference between Habermas (a latter-day modernist philosopher) and Derrida (a poststructuralist thinker) when it comes to tolerance. Habermas argues — correctly, I believe — that hidden within so-called tolerance is a silent limit, beyond which the tolerant party will not go. In other words, supposed “tolerance” masks the fact that it is conditional upon the tolerated party not overstepping these limits.

So far, Derrida would agree, it is a correct “deconstruction” of tolerance. But then Habermas goes further and claims that this is exactly why we need a democratic constitution in which human rights are entrenched — so that tolerance can be constitutionally guaranteed for everyone, precisely to prevent the hidden intolerance at the heart of so-called “tolerance” to assert itself.
By contrast, Derrida would not depend on any constitutional “guarantees” — they are no guarantee that tolerance will prevail, after all — but would insist that tolerance, like most important human practices (including hospitality, gift-giving, forming a community, striving for justice, and so on) is governed by a set of countervailing logics, as it were.

These are “excessive tolerance” and “restricted tolerance”, respectively. What happens in practice is that they limit each other, so that (thank goodness!) neither can exist in a pure state. “Pure” excessive tolerance would tolerate everything, including (absurdly) the massacre of ones kin, while “pure” restricted tolerance would tolerate everything on specific conditions ONLY, so that it does not even deserve the name of tolerance (that is, it would really amount to intolerance). But because one learns to tolerate people’s actions on the implicit understanding that they do not “test” your tolerance unbearably, tolerance can happen; or conversely, because placing too many conditions on tolerance destroys it from within, turning it into complete intolerance, one learns to ameliorate one’s attitude and drops the conditions, thus allowing tolerance, once again, to emerge.

In this way tolerance is treated as a complex phenomenon, and not subjected to the supposed panacea of a constitution (which would change nothing regarding the tensions within tolerance itself). What Derrida allows one to see, is that the ability to grasp its complex character, promotes the ability to practise it in such a way that it can work.

Similarly, a “complexity approach” in science would encourage one to be sensitive to the multiple conceptual frameworks within which a phenomenon can be inscribed, highlighting different aspects of such phenomena from framework (or discipline-specific discourse) to framework. In the preceding discussion of the search for a “world formula”, it will be remembered, different conceptions of space-time underpin the distinguishable theoretical approaches, and because these conceptions are fundamental to the theories concerned, phenomena would appear different when inscribed in the one as opposed to the other. This does not necessarily make the one wrong and the other right — within each framework the phenomenon may make perfect sense, as long as discursive or theoretical “rules” from a different framework is not smuggled in to adjudicate what is not consonant with it. The lesson, I believe, is that reality is irremediably complex, and only wishful thinking (or ideology, which is a species of wishful thinking) may construe it otherwise.