Thesis: The search for a “Theory of Everything” or ultimate unifying framework often mirrors theological ambition: a desire for a singular, all-encompassing principle akin to God.
Observation: Physicists pursue unified models — string theory, loop quantum gravity, grand unification — framed as potentially revealing the “final laws of nature.” Language such as “ultimate,” “complete,” or “final theory” evokes metaphysical totality, suggesting that reality can be captured exhaustively in formalism.
Analysis: Conceptually, this mirrors theological aspiration: the universe is imagined as fully knowable, reducible to a singular principle, and coherent under a single authority. Relational emergence, perspectival actualisation, and contingent interplay are subordinated to the quest for closure. Physics, in this pursuit, projects divine totality onto formal abstraction, subtly preserving metaphysical desire in secular garb.
Implication: Treating final theories as attainable or even meaningful ontologically risks foreclosing relational openness, reinforcing metaphysical assumptions of perfection, necessity, and completeness. Theological residues shape both expectation and interpretation, encouraging the illusion that the cosmos is fully capturable and predetermined.
Conclusion: A relational perspective reframes final theories as tools for modelling patterns, not as ultimate truths. Recognising the theological residue in the quest for unity allows physics to embrace contingent, processual, perspectival actualisation, moving from metaphysical ambition to relational understanding.
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