NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING - A Post In Which Selena Explains To Stephen Hawking That There Can Never Be A Theory Of Everything Because...

‘...it would have to be something that was neither subject nor object, neither force nor matter, neither spirit nor soul: but shall I not be told that such a thing will resemble nothing so much as a phantasmagoria? ...Of course, it must resemble that and everything else which exists or could exist, and not only a phantasmagoria! It must have that dominant family likeness by virtue of which all that is recognizes itself as related to it.’

Here before us, in the unsuspecting tones of the nineteenth century philosopher, is the entire Theory of Everything. There is a consummate completeness about it. In fact, Nietzsche may have expressed the inexpressible better than the physicist. For whatever the physicist may have to say of it, everyone knows that once he sets himself to construct by pure mathematics, and without appeal to any empiricism, a theory which aims to be the only complete and essential form of knowledge, that it ‘must have that dominant family likeness by virtue of which all that is, recognizes itself as related to it.’

And to this extent, the significance of an eternal law of nature as
something divorced from man, is in fact identical with the idea of a completely
consistent and unified theory of the differential equations that would unite all
possible co-ordinates. And yet, it can hardly be a simple matter to show that
one single theory may explain the baffling complexity of infinitely divergent or
even opposite phenomena. Certainly, various attempts have been made to explain
the idea of unity as a pre-existing norm in terms of a logically consistent,
self-explanatory physical principle, this depending mainly on the mutual
conversion of electromagnetic and gravitational forces, but so far without
success. Efforts have also been made to combine general relativity and quantum
mechanics into a coherent hyper-dimensional theory, but inevitably, the
mathematical analysis that permits the physicist to use a terms like self-explanatory with any measure of precision is still incomplete, and we can only grasp it by grasping that it is causa sui, which is to say that it cannot have been caused by anything other than itself.

On the edge of large events in the evolution of the human mind, we have expanded the frontiers of knowledge beyond all intellectual grasp to include even ourselves. In this sense modern scientific enquiry is profoundly inclusive. Indeed, no one can have failed to notice that one of the greatest difficulties in the whole unification of physics is to arrive at any kind of objective measure of an isotropic law of nature as something which is divorced from man. Something whose attributes are therefore self-evident and not contingent.

Self-evidently therefore, and not contingently, it should be born in mind that
it must be deducible from its own essential nature as well as providing the
ground for every possible contingent deduction. For if it were not, it would in
some measure be limited to being a necessary consequence of our own essential
nature, rather than this unique all-inclusive totality which Spinoza called “God
or Nature” (Deus sive Nature), and which Kant referred to as “the thing in
itself” (das Ding an sich). Nor can we ever assign a higher degree of continuity
to such a theory than continuation in our thoughts - ex nihilo nihil fit... (nothing comes from nothing)!

Dreamy