The Infinite Staircase by Geoffrey A. Moore

Author:Geoffrey A. Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953295378
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2021-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

Stair 11: Theory

One Meme to Rule Them All

By placing theory at the top of the staircase, I am not referring to the theory of just anything—I mean the theory of everything! For that, in effect, is what metaphysics claims to be—the ultimate ground for understanding everything else.

So what would a theory of everything consist of? In the terms of our staircase, it is an act of language, incorporating both narrative and analytics, that seeks to explain, well, everything. Actually, if you add no other criteria, coming up with a theory of everything is not that hard. You could say, for example:

•The universe is run by spirits who animate all things and who can be negotiated with in order to accomplish one’s desired ends. Name all the spirits, figure out what each one wants, and you understand everything.

•The universe consists of four basic forces—electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity—and whatever is not covered by physics is an epiphenomenon of no abiding consequence.

•The universe is a dream, a projection of the imagination and has no reality beyond consciousness itself.

•The universe is lots of different things, perhaps like a supermarket, and it needs a bag full of theories to account for it properly.

Really, the possibilities are endless.

For a theory of everything to be taken seriously, however, it must measure up well against at least four standards:

1.Precision. It must identify and discriminate everything from everything else in ways that are stable and verifiable. (This is where the dream theory falls short.)

2.Scope. It must leave nothing out, nor declare any phenomenon unworthy of consideration or unreal. (This is where the four-forces theory falls short.)

3.Structure. It must anticipate and imply phenomena that are as yet undiscovered. (This is where the spirits theory falls short.)

4.Coherence. It must communicate a unity that underlies all variety. (This is where the bag of theories theory falls short.)

This set of standards is derived from the best book on metaphysics I know, Stephen Pepper’s World Hypotheses, published back in 1942. Pepper doesn’t actually present a theory of everything of his own. Rather, he provides a framework for understanding and critiquing any given candidate theory, something he calls a world hypothesis. His seminal idea is that all world hypotheses achieve coherence through the same mechanism, namely a root metaphor, and then compete with one another on scope, precision, and structure.

A root metaphor, as we have discussed, functions as a grand analogy, allowing one to decipher the mysteries of A by using the structure of B as a kind of decoder ring. As long as the categories used to describe A are derived directly from those that make up B, the theory will be coherent to the degree that B itself is a single, whole thing. By contrast, if the theory fills itself out with some extra categories that do not map back directly to B, then it will be incoherent and thus invalidated. Presuming it can meet the criterion of coherence, then the remaining criteria of precision, scope,

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