On Unification in Physics

I really enjoyed the article, and actually understood most of it! I made a list of points I appreciated as I went... - Humility is required - Understanding is rewarded so questioning is painful - "Science advances one funeral at a time" might apply to politics... - We should be cautious against making it look like there are just a few loose ends to tie into some grand unification - Universities are not designed to create revolutionaries - Infinities are never observed in practice With regard to this last point, when I had the experience 50 years ago that redirected my life, I came into contact with consciousness/intelligence that was unbounded and therefore infinite. It was, in my experience, everywhere and nowhere and out of time. For me, the grand unification is to ponder the relationship between that unbounded consciousness and the fact that we can not only perceive a world at all but that we can perceive a world that we can all agree on, no matter how different our interpretat... Read more

First, let me say—wow. It’s rare to come across such a motivating and thought-provoking deep dive into the core of how we progress in understanding the universe. The author's emphasis on unification as the true driver of progress struck a chord with me. The simplicity that comes with unification not only aligns with how breakthroughs have historically happened but also feels like a guiding principle we desperately need to refocus on. That said, I also found myself reflecting on how challenging it is to create the kinds of methods and concepts that can truly handle this level of unification. It’s one thing to aim for simplicity; it’s another to develop entirely new frameworks that can both unify and manage the complexity of transitioning from our current fragmented models. A true paradigm shift—one that changes the way we think and approach physics—feels essential, but as pointed out, that requires boldness, creativity, and a lot of humility. I especially appreciated the points about ... Read more

It's a thought-provoking and ambitious piece on Unification in Physics. It’s clear that the author invested a great deal of effort, thought, and passion into exploring this complex and fascinating topic. The work is rich with insight, and it presents an inspiring perspective on the journey of physics as a discipline. I’d like to share what I appreciated most and offer a few suggestions to help make the ideas even more impactful. One of the standout strengths of the essay is its breadth and depth. The author has done an excellent job of showing how unification has driven progress in physics, from historical breakthroughs to modern challenges. The use of the "Unimap" is a particularly effective way to anchor the discussion, offering a clear visualization of the connections and opportunities for further exploration. I also loved how the human element is emphasized in scientific progress, highlighting traits like creativity, humility, and boldness as essential for breakthroughs. It’s a r... Read more

Engaging writing. I cannot offer much feedback, except that the author should take a look at the literature on progress in science and take into account the arguments for thinking that disunity in its various forms, e.g., conceptual and methodological, is an important condition for progress in science. Work in this area is done by philosophers like Nancy Cartwright and Hasok Chang. A good place for finding appropriate sources is the following entry on scientific progress: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-progress/. A closely related area of work that might be interesting is about what successful unification in physics actually involves. Some are suggesting that such unification is far more limited than appears to be the case on the surface of things. Mark Wilson’s work, e.g., his book Wandering Significance, is along these lines. Cartwright, already mentioned, also writes on this topic. This is not to say that I think the author is wrong to think that unification is impo... Read more

Again another great paper with excellent arguments and examples. It hints at a singular unified model of all reality. This makes me think of Donald Hoffman's user interface reality (and a deeper reality from which it emanates), along with David Bohm's explicate and implicate order (which resulted in an author writing the hit book The Holographic Universe), and even reminds me of Tom Campbell's My Big TOE, though I haven't looked at that in depth. I would add to unification and simplicity and even beauty, another factor: explanatory power. That's the test for any model: if, based on its first principles, it can account for the resulting observations without appealing to outside forces. (The psychological perspective is also quite interesting: how we are oriented towards unification and simplicity (although, personally I would argue that actually it is not unification in the sense of undifferentiation but unification in the sense of union/community that we are after), and whether we are ... Read more

It's a wonderfully stimulating post! Mostly I've been trying to draw parallels between the author's observations on physics and the scientific discipline I pursued: psychology. It's been a long time since I got my PhD, but our kid is currently an ABD grad student in psych, and they report experiences quite similar to my own. Plus I keep up with the literature at least tangentially, so I can see the continuity of trajectories from then to now and extending into the future. The Unimap -- what a wonderful piece of work! I also love the online navigational tool -- not replicable in a printed version. Would it be possible to build such a unimap for psych research? At a very high level, yes. E.g., the transition from behaviorism to cognitive psych might point to articles like Miller's "The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," which documents a way of exploring inside the black box that Skinner et al. opted to sidestep. Miller's article also performs a significant unification, specifical... Read more

Addressing the key points from the summary: 1/ Our models of the world are fundamentally limited and flawed; we will never grasp the true nature of reality. I think it more accurate to say that, it seems very probable that reality is more complex than any entity is capable of dealing with in detail in anything remotely approximating real time. The survival need for all entities to act in something closely approximating real time imposes a necessity for adopting simplifying assumptions and heuristics. Genetic evolution by natural selection has, by differential survival over deep time, sorted variants that have managed to survive. We are all the inheritors of this deep set of sorted heuristics within our neural networks and associate sensory and computational systems. A similar process has happened over cultural time, in sorting and developing stories that we are all born into that form an implicit paradigmatic background for the development of such linguistic and conceptual un... Read more

I find myself in agreement with the author on most things regarding the progress in scientific inquiry. Long time ago when trying to make sense of the concept and role of models in social sciences, I found out that there are several schools of thought about this subject. I think what the author has in mind is the instrumental view of models. They are then fundamentally instruments used in describing, explaining and predicting things. Models are useful simplifications of reality (supposing one accepts the latter term). Usefulness - not truthfulness - is what constitutes models. They are often constructs one can fiddle with instead of the part of reality they simplify. Under this interpretation they are never true. However, there are scholars that deem models as a part of reality. Indeed, model theory endorses this view. And then there people who reject the model-reality distinction. Anyway, accepting the first interpretation, I find the summary points - point 1, in particular - mostly ... Read more

Not always convincing – for different reasons. The “advices” given in it look somewhat like the author would try to teach the birds how to fly or the rabbits how to procreate. Below, I'm including few comments to this post in a form of rather cursory reflections. Unification of physics does not consist in unifying everything with everything. Such an approach has rather philosophical origin, in particular inspired by the Hindu concept of "primeval unity". I’m not enthusiastic about such (luckily outmoded) New Age concepts of mixing physics with pseudo-scientific mysticism. When it comes to real unification in physics, two things should be stated. First, self-evident, is that different branches of applied physics so to say by definition do not need to be unified. Everyone knows, however, that the thread connecting applied physics with theoretical physics is usually very short. Second (which is the right point), if we focus on theoretical physics, unification is very precisely defined a... Read more

Very insightful indeed.