Beyond the Consumer’s Dream of Ultimate Knowledge

Why the human pursuit of knowledge is endless

Image by Matheus Bertelli, from Pexels

In a McDonalds or Amazon world, in which we consumers feel we have the right to be promptly delivered whatever we want, wrapped up in a convenient package (that ends up in a landfill somewhere), we might like to think science and knowledge in general can be completed. We imagine there could be a neat final theory that wraps up the universe in its models and equations, leaving nothing significant left over.

Physicists speak of a “theory of everything” (TOE), of a “final theory, ultimate theory, theory of the world or master theory,” which would be “a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe.” And from finished physics you could derive everything else as just the construction of complexities, from chemistry to biology to economics.

Let’s see, though, whether this conception of ultimate knowledge makes much sense.

Ultimate Knowledge as the Seed of All Predictions

First, what is a scientific theory? It’s a well-tested explanation that enables the knower to predict how the known thing works, including what it would do under various…