Why a Theory of Everything Is Not What It Thinks It Is: 6 Why the ‘Theory of Everything’ Is a Category Mistake

By this point, the problem with a Theory of Everything should feel less like a technical obstacle and more like a conceptual misfire.

Relativity removed the privileged frame.

Quantum theory removed the privileged description.

Unification removed the hope of a final layer.

What remains of the Theory of Everything is not a scientific project, but a category mistake — the attempt to treat an abstraction as if it could function as an ontology.

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1. What “Everything” Is Supposed to Mean

The phrase Theory of Everything carries an intuitive promise: nothing left out.

But “everything” here does not name a domain.

It names an absence of exclusion.

And absence of exclusion is not an ontological category.

To speak meaningfully, a theory must draw distinctions.

It must specify what counts as a phenomenon, under what conditions, and relative to which cut.

“Everything,” by contrast, specifies no cut at all.

It gestures toward totality while refusing the discipline that makes description possible.

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2. Explanation Is Not Inventory

A Theory of Everything is often defended as an ultimate inventory: a complete list of fundamental entities and laws.

But inventories do not explain phenomena.

They merely re-describe them at a chosen level of abstraction.

Explanation requires:

• relevance,

• perspective,

• and a mapping between system and instance.

A theory that includes everything explains nothing, because it cannot distinguish what matters here from what does not.

This is not a limitation of physics.

It is a condition of meaning.

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3. “Nothing Is Missing” Is Not an Ontological Claim

Proponents of a final theory often insist that even if we cannot access the total description, it nevertheless exists.

But “nothing is missing” is not a description of reality.

It is a reassurance directed at anxiety.

Ontologically, what matters is not whether something is missing in principle, but whether a description can be instantiated as phenomenon.

A description that cannot be instantiated is not incomplete.

It is empty.

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4. The God’s-Eye View Reappears — Disguised

The most persistent feature of the Theory of Everything is its imagined vantage point.

Even when no observer is named, the theory presumes a view from which:

• all scales are visible,

• all contexts are subsumed,

• and all distinctions are simultaneously available.

This is the god’s-eye view in secular dress.

Relativity already forbids it.

Quantum theory refuses to support it.

Ontology has no place for it.

A view from nowhere is not neutral.

It is incoherent.

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5. Why a Theory of Everything Would Be Ontologically Trivial

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that a mathematically consistent Theory of Everything were written down tomorrow.

What would change?

No new phenomenon would appear.

No new distinction would be drawn.

No new cut would be instantiated.

The theory would sit above all contexts and therefore relate to none.

Its very universality would deprive it of explanatory force.

A theory that explains everything explains nothing in particular.

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6. Physics Does Not Need Completion — It Needs Discipline

The enduring success of physics has never depended on finishing the universe.

It depends on:

• constructing systems that articulate structured possibility,

• identifying the conditions under which phenomena can be instantiated,

• and refusing to speak where no cut can be drawn.

This is not incompleteness.

It is ontological responsibility.

The error of the Theory of Everything is not ambition.

It is misclassification.

It treats totality as a thing, rather than recognising it as a failed abstraction.

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7. After the Theory of Everything

Once the demand for completion is abandoned, nothing collapses.

What remains is a richer, more precise ontology:

• systems as theories of possible instances,

• instantiation as perspectival shift,

• and phenomena as first-order meaning.

Physics continues, but without metaphysical inflation.

Ontology sharpens, but without finality.

The universe does not need to be finished in order to be understood.

It needs to be cut.

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Closing Note

The Theory of Everything is not wrong.

It is misplaced.

Once we see that, we can stop asking physics to do metaphysics badly — and begin doing ontology carefully.