Theory of Everything: How Fear of Failure Hinders Physicists’ Quest to Find the Ultimate Answer

It’s been over a century since the physics boom period exploded with Albert Einstein, Max Planck and others sending us into a new world of chaos from our previously ordered universe. This brilliant generation of physicists eventually peeled back the layers of the universe, as well as the atom, to reveal a world stranger than fiction.

Since the beginnings of quantum mechanics, the theory governing the microworld of atoms and particles, the holy grail of physics has been finding a theory of everything, uniting quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which applies to the universe on a large scale. .

But we still don’t have a proven theory of everything. And I believe that fear of failure is a big part of the problem.

Creating a theory of everything isn’t exactly easy. It is about producing a framework unifying the fundamental forces of our universe, while taking into account all the underlying constants and quantities as well as every subatomic particle. The prize for whoever answers this final question will be eternal glory in the annals of humanity.

There was a great thirst to solve this problem in Einstein’s generation. In fact, Einstein worked on a theory of everything on his deathbed – work for which he was ultimately ridiculed. Einstein’s contribution to physics was so great that he still remains a superstar. But physicists Arthur Eddington, Hermann Weyl and mathematician David Hilbert were not so lucky, and some faced far worse consequences.

Take Eddington, for example, perhaps the greatest scientist you’ve never heard of. The Cambridge astronomer and physicist proved Einstein right in his work analyzing a 1919 eclipse, propelling Einstein to superstardom. Eddington also wrote the first English books on relativity before doing the same on Georges Lemaître’s Big Bang theory.

He also wrote a book on quantum physics and became the greatest popular science writer in the 1920s and 1930s, alongside his groundbreaking work on stellar physics (the physics of stars). Yet it remains obscure today due to its intense search for a fundamental theory.

Published posthumously, his attempt was immediately banned for its incredible failure. Mocked as numerology (the belief in a mystical relationship between a number and events), his strange interest in the power of certain numbers was ridiculed by other scientists. And, as many renowned astrophysicists have pointed out, it has produced no value since its publication.

Eddington’s final resounding failure served as a powerful warning about the price of missing the target. The last decade of his life devoted to the search for a theory of everything resulted in serious damage to his legacy.

A new generation

The generation of physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988), which followed that of Einstein and Eddington, was disinterested in a theory of everything. Feynman and his peers found their own glory in new subatomic discoveries and theories, as well as applications of physics to chemistry and biology, which led to several Nobel Prizes. The ridicule endured by those who tried and failed before them is perhaps one reason.

This excessive cost of failure ultimately grew alongside the glory of interwar physics. In a period of unprecedented success, failure was even more ruthless. This provided little incentive for bright young modern minds seeking to apply themselves to the larger question.

Even today, attempts at theories about everything are ridiculed. String theory, for example, is one such attempt and was scorned by Nobel Prize winner Roger Penrose as not being “real science”.

He is not alone. Physicist Stephen Hawking believed that a version of string theory called M-theory was our best option for a theory of everything. But the theory struggles to produce predictions that can be tested by experiments.

A young scientist today may ask: if Einstein, Eddington and Hawking couldn’t solve the problem, then who will? And indeed, many doubt that this can be achieved. Is it even necessary when, pragmatically, we can do without it?

It’s no wonder, then, that many physicists today prefer to avoid the term “theory of everything,” opting instead for less grandiose alternatives such as “quantum gravity.”

Funding and career progression

Besides the heavy price of failure, other problems await us. A brilliant young mind might find himself in a professional dead end while searching for a theory of everything. What academic progression can we expect at the start of our career if we wish? Who will grant significant funding to young, unproven researchers pursuing a seemingly impossible goal in the short term?

It is likely that a theory of everything will ultimately require massive collaboration to solve. Ironically, this might be a task reserved for older physicists, despite warnings from Eddington and others. Francis Crick devoted his attention to trying to solve the problem of consciousness in his later years, but without success.

We need collaboration. But perhaps we are looking at the prospect of a theory of everything coming only from those who have accomplished so much that they can afford potential embarrassment and will be given the benefit of the doubt. This hardly arouses the enthusiasm of dynamic young minds who might otherwise tackle the problem.

In trying to solve the ultimate problem, we may have inadvertently created a monster. Our academic framework for progressing research is not conducive to this, and history has painted a bleak picture of what happens to those who try.

And yet, our greatest progress has always come from those who are willing to take risks.