Physics is Futile: An Argument Against Grand Unified Theories

Physics is held in higher esteem than most other human intellectual endeavors, and part of this esteem is rooted in the belief that physics provides us with objective truths about reality. We tend to believe that modern physicists are the Platos and Aristotles of our day, armed now not merely with philosophical rhetoric but with unimpeachable data and mathematics. If one were to believe the hype that is peddled by the media and by the physics community at large, it would seem that we are growing closer and closer to figuring out everything, that all of reality will soon, or at least someday, be understood through the unbiased lens of a perfect, objectively truthful “Grand Unified Theory.” This optimistic outlook is rooted in two basic assumptions, that there is an objective reality and that there is an objectively truthful way of describing that reality on a fundamental level.

The first assumption is not hard to accept. To deny the existence of the universe we seem to inhabit is a stance at best solipsistic and egotistical, and at worst idiotic and nonsensical. When we see a flock of birds take off from a rooftop, we rarely take the time to count them all, but this does not mean that their number is indeterminate. We can rest assured that birds really did fly from the rooftop and if we had taken a photograph, we might then be able to count them all. Similarly, when I inevitably die I will have every reason to believe that for billions of other people the world will go on turning after I’m no longer around to observe it from my own limited perspective. The only arguments against the objective existence of reality depend upon the “brain in a vat” notion that one might be dreaming this all up, but even that theory supposes the existence of a real, physical brain in a vat somewhere which is doing the dreaming. The detractors of the first assumption might also be said to include those who believe that reality is indeterminate on the quantum scale or Buddhists who believe that the world of objects is an illusion, but while both of these groups may reject the idea of definite “objects” as such, they still admit the existence of reality in some form or another.

The second assumption, that there is an objectively truthful way of describing reality on a fundamental level, is much more problematic. The trouble lies both in language and in the nature of reality itself.

Language is rooted in metaphor and is inherently non-objective. There is no sentence in the human language which is not modified in some sense by an individual’s experiential bias or by the presence or absence of contextual information. If I write, “Donald Trump sure is a smart guy!” the reader would obviously need to know whether I am being ironic or sincere. The meaning of the sentence is modified by the bias of the reader, and by their individual perception of bias within the speaker.

Similarly, in physics, a statement like “all the information about a particle is encoded in its wave function” is not objective and cannot be verified or falsified without completing the impossible task of extricating it from a strictly metaphorical understanding. “All the information,” presupposes specific types of information that physicists have thought to use when describing a particle, and it doesn’t include, say, the particle’s favorite restaurant or television show. “Encoded in its wave function,” could be taken to imply that someone, maybe God, took the time to actually take the relevant information pertaining to an infinite number of particles then code that data into a particular wave function equation. I would presume they didn’t mean “encoded” in this manner, but in any case it’s a plausible interpretation and we are still left to wonder about this term “wave function,” which can be taken in several ways. We might consider it as a synonym for one out of a variety of wave equations, the famous Schrodinger’s equation for example, or to some theorists it might refer instead to something with a physical but imperceptible existence, something which Schrodinger’s equation and other wave equations can merely approximate.

Physicists can alleviate these ambiguities to a certain extent with the use of additional sentences which specify their intended meanings, but so long as they use language to make these specifications, there will always be further specifications to make. We can make a definition approximate objectivity by avoiding theoretical and physical descriptions entirely, recounting only the strict details of experimental observation, but even within these details rhetorical ambiguities will arise. The only form of human language which admits no subjectivity or metaphor is mathematics, which may suggest that mathematics is the route by which we can make objective physical statements. Trouble arises however when we try to assign meaning to these mathematical statements and connect them to the phenomena they are meant to describe. Returning to Schrodinger’s equation again, we might say that it is an objective statement— the rules are well defined and the equation will function in the same manner for any mathematician— but as soon as we apply meaning to the equation and say that it describes quantum probability or a particle’s wave-function, we immediately enter once again into the realm of subjectivity and metaphor. This fundamental problem in asserting meaning in mathematics is what led Albert Einstein to write, "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

If we assume there really is an objective truth to the universe, the only way which we would ever be able to express it and achieve our “Grand Unified Theory” would be to literally write the equation for the universe, to write a code which could, using nothing but mathematical law, reproduce the entire universe with fidelity. Elon Musk disciples and The Matrix fans aside, it is obvious to most that such a code will never be written and that the task is fundamentally impossible. We have every reason to believe that the universe is infinitely expansive, infinitely complex, and eternal in duration. Yet even if none of these statements were true, there would still be no computer or simulation that could run the “code” or “program” of the universe, nor any brain that could comprehend it, because there is not now nor will there ever be a computer or thinking machine with more RAM than the reality it exists within. One cannot fit the entire universe into a computer which exists in that universe, but even if a computer with infinite processing power did exist, we would still lack the mathematical technique necessary to even write that code which would reproduce the complexity of our physical reality. At an absolute minimum, we would need sufficient mathematical tools to replicate a three-dimensional field evolving in time and with fractal complexity such that every infinitesimally small alteration in the coordinates would produce different value. No one has thought of a three-dimensional fractal equation, much less one that evolves over time, much less one that evolves over infinitesimally small intervals of time. The closest things we have at this point are video game graphics engines, Hollywood CGI, and two dimensional fractal plots like the Mandelbrot set, none of which inspire any confidence that we will be able to someday craft infinite, three-dimensional fractal equations which evolve as a function of time.

Even if we could craft such an equation, the effort would still be futile, because the problems of language, representation, and the human capacity for objective knowledge all collide with the problem posed by the universe itself.

All of human understanding is, by necessity, rooted in dichotomies. The concept of hot necessitates a cold counterpart, just as black necessitates a white counterpart. This may seem like an obvious fact of reality, but it is more aptly described as a fact of human consciousness. In the same manner that computers store and process information using digital codes of ones and zeros, our brains store and process information using individual neurons which alternate between states of rest or excitation. Our entire capacity for thought and knowledge is determined by this binary state of individual neurons, and thus we are predisposed to think in dualities. These dualities pervade every aspect of our ideologies, culture, mathematics, and physics, and it is completely beyond our mental capacity to envision any system of language or understanding which could exist without them. A language without duality would not be a language, it would be just a single word— an infinite homonym.

That dichotomy is essential to comprehension precludes the possibility of a true “Grand Unified Theory,” owing to the unexpected but unavoidable fact that space, far from being void, vacuum, or merely the nothingness that somethingness moves around in, is in fact an energetic, dynamic field. The “objects” which we think of as “matter” are not merely raisins embedded in a bread loaf of nothingness, but are in fact fluctuations in this omnipresent field. There is no fundamental distinction between space and matter, and thus no inherent dichotomy through which we may divide, conquer, and properly understand our universe.

I do not expect you to simply take my word on this theoretical assertion, but the fact remains that matter does not consist of little billiard balls whizzing around through “empty space,” and this truth must reinforce one’s certainty that the universe, on its most fundamental level, is inherently immune to our understanding. Even the three dimensional fractal equation I proposed would come up woefully short, as even fractal equations are based in dualities, relying upon the border which divides the “bounded” and “unbounded” values of the graph.

Objective truths are evidently elusive, but I do not believe that this completely invalidates a quest for knowledge and understanding. While I argue that we will never achieve a “Grand Unified Theory,” this does not mean that we cannot broaden or refine our perspective, or that physics is impotent in its capacity to enlighten us or push us forward as a society. The “oneness” of the universe is impossible for our duality-based intellect to grapple with in any meaningful way, and yet the road to this truth is paved by the noble efforts of many great intellects and physicists, from Aristotle—who argued that space was a “plenum”— to Einstein, who demonstrated that the force of gravity is transmitted not by “action at a distance” but by the medium of space itself.

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