Member-only story
Unifying Theories Are Intensely Sexy To Scientists
…until they’re not!
“Unifying theories, although intrinsically appealing, should be subject to careful scrutiny.” — Professor Nutt
Lately I’ve been commenting on a tremendous new book that I’ve been invited to review. It’s called Overloaded: How Every Aspect of Your Life is Influenced by Your Brain Chemicals, authored by Ginny Smith. And she quotes Professor David Nutt who makes some interesting points respecting the problem of unifying theories.
What is a unified theory?
This is where a new discovery in science — although it really exists in every discipline — seems to describe the world or a phenomenon (quantified through arithmetic abstraction or conceptual formulation) with such force that a consensus builds around it. Worded differently,
“[T]he attempt to unify the disparate phenomena of nature within a single theoretical framework and a single set of descriptive equations.” — Editors for AccessScience.
And before you know it, we’re basing further discoveries and experiments on this axiom or principle, only to learn that it’s nowhere nearly as universal as we had initially hoped. This can lead to some pretty dismal medical…