High School The Many TOE's Theory: Examining the Possibilities

[fractalzen]

TL;DR

How do we know the 'EVERYTHING' is any particular way?

Physicists search for explanations and a theory of everything, but how do we know that the 'everything' is any particular way? What if there is no ONE theory of everything. What if there is an infinite number of TOE's that can be shown to exist? How would we choose among them? For example what if the universe was made up of ideas, and even that! is itself an idea? What then?

 

[Dale]

Summary: How do we know the 'EVERYTHING' is any particular way?

What if there is an infinite number of TOE's that can be shown to exist? How would we choose among them?

Probably we would pick the simplest. Either that or the easiest to compute.

 

[Baluncore]

What if there is an infinite number of TOE's that can be shown to exist?

One TOE would be nice, beyond that, you would need to collect more specific data to eliminate the false TOEs. Meanwhile, Occam's razor keeps it simple.

If you have more equations than data, you must eliminate redundant equations, or gather more data to resolve a unique solution. That is the way of science.

 

[Kevin the Kiwi]

Summary: How do we know the 'EVERYTHING' is any particular way?

Physicists search for explanations and a theory of everything, but how do we know that the 'everything' is any particular way? What if there is no ONE theory of everything. What if there is an infinite number of TOE's that can be shown to exist? How would we choose among them? For example what if the universe was made up of ideas, and even that! is itself an idea? What then?

The theory that there are in fact many explanations would be "the" theory of everything.