Theory of Everything
You may have heard the phrase “Theory of Everything”. It is the “holy grail” of science – a theory that
explains….everything! It implies that science is zeroing in on complete knowledge of the world. All
that is left is to solve a few “dangling participles”. It’s just around the corner...
explains….everything! It implies that science is zeroing in on complete knowledge of the world. All
that is left is to solve a few “dangling participles”. It’s just around the corner...
This idea has seeped deep into modern culture – that science continues its inexorable march
toward complete understanding. “Superstition” of all kinds, including God and religion, will be
relegated to the trash bin of history by science. But is that an accurate assessment of the current
state of affairs in science? I think not.
I am a big believer in science and that we must take seriously the incredible fruit of scientific
inquiry. But the reality is that we are swimming in mystery. Man is to mystery as a fish is to water.
The idea of a “theory of everything” has been around a while. At the height of the Enlightenment, it
was widely held that we were very close to figuring the world out. Newton’s grand laws of
mechanics and the other staggering successes of science led many to this conclusion. Science
was pushing the need for God as an explanation into smaller and smaller gaps – the ever shrinking
“God of the gaps”. Pierre Simon Laplace summed up the spirit of the age perfectly when upon
presenting his “book of all knowledge” to Napolean was asked “But where is God in your
system?” to which he famously replied…”I have no need for that hypothesis!”
This sentiment remains widespread today. But the truth is that mystery has reasserted itself
strongly since the days of LaPlace. I call it “Revenge of God of the Gaps”! Rather than being close
to a “theory of everything”, science is now surrounded by deep mystery at every turn. And much of
this new mystery is of a different sort. Rather than being due to our ignorance – to be eradicated by
future knowledge and discovery – much of this new mystery is structural and permanent. This new
mystery cannot be removed even in principle. It’s a new kind of “gap” for the God of the Gaps!
The first dose of post–Enlightenment mystery came from Einstein and his theories of relativity. Our
perception – and indeed the unanimous view of scientists since inception – is that we live in a fixed
3D world in which time marches steadily by. But Einstein proved that neither space nor time is
fixed but can actually change (at very high speeds). Time can speed up or slow down. Physical
dimensions like the size of your living room can also change. Further, space and time are
intertwined and not separate entities (space–time). Weird.
Then came the quantum world, which put mystery into overdrive. Things in the quantum world
dissolve into “waves of probability”, tunnel through walls, pop in and out of existence, and are
strangely connected even at large distances. In God’s quantum world, there are hard limits to our
complete knowledge (see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). The best we can know are sometimes
probabilities.
Chaos theory has added to the mystery by demonstrating that many physical systems, like the
weather, are hopelessly unpredictable beyond short time frames due to “sensitivity to initial
conditions”. This is the idea behind the famous quip that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa, it can
cause a tornado in Kansas! Cosmology isn’t helping banish mystery either. Scientists now believe
that the universe is made up mostly of “dark matter” and “dark energy,” which we know almost
nothing about.
Most scientists today are recognizing the idea of emergence – that as we climb the ladder of
complexity (from elementary particles to chemistry to biology to psychology), each “level” brings its
own laws and rules into existence that are not reducible to lower levels. Genuine novelty emerges.
The most striking example that continues to befuddle all is how consciousness arises from the
purely physical aspects of the brain.
God likes mystery. As a Christian, I expect mystery from Creation – even as God is allowing us to
pull back the curtain on parts of it. That seems to be the case in the real world – incredible advances
while still steeped in mystery. God allows deep access to His Creation – and enjoys and rewards
our search – while keeping some content behind the firewall! Let’s continue the exploration of
God’s world to His delight…..but with a humility demanded by the facts.
Thank you, God, for the gaps!
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