Thinking the unthinkable – an alternative route to a unified theory

Five hundred years ago, humankind was on the cusp of a remarkable realisation. Over the previous centuries, astrologers had built-up detailed descriptions of the trajectories of those heavenly bodies which move against the background constellations – the planets. The more information they garnered about these brightest stars, the more questions they found themselves asking. Based on the underlying erroneous assumption that the Earth was the centre of all, the models they created to explain their observations became increasingly convoluted. Enter Nicolaus Copernicus. In one fell swoop, his heliocentric theory swept away all the erstwhile elaborate thinking and changed our perspective of the cosmos forever.

Forward-wind to today and it feels as though we’ve reached another of those crunch points, where the theories to explain our measured observations are becoming too contorted. Over the last couple of centuries, imbued with a purely deterministic mindset, physicists and mathematicians have been constructing increasingly intricate models of the way our universe works. The Standard Model of Particle Physics is fiendishly complicated for anyone who hasn’t spent years learning about quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. The attempts that have been forthcoming to integrate gravity into this equation make it even more complex and increasingly reliant on mathematical constructs for which there is no evidence. Other attempts to unify all the forces are just as perplexing and equally rely on theoretical undetectable phenomena.

The gap between our metaphysical understanding of the universe and experimental results has become seemingly insurmountable. Perhaps it’s time, as Copernicus did, to step back and ponder on whether there is a much simpler way to understand things, which would allow a comprehensive appreciation of our observations without having to invent new dimensions, dark energy or undetectable particles.

The approach taken in this paper reflects on what we have learnt about the nature of energy and matter over the last two centuries and suggests a radically alternative hypothesis. By treating particles as energetic systems, which respond spontaneously to their material and energetic environment, a construct is formulated which sees the universe as an evolving system. What we observe today is the outcome of eons of evolutionary processes – no more or less than the life we now experience on Planet Earth is the outcome of evolution. In this construct, none of the observed particles, measured universal constants or apparent forces were pre-determined.

The only mathematics within this alternative thesis is game theory, drawing from the relatively recent field of evolutionary game theory within the biological sciences. Applying this to particles of matter allows a far simpler way to understand not only the origins of all the forces of nature but also resolves various other mysteries which have emerged over the last century, such as what causes the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, why wave/particle duality and how to reconcile the physical with the social and life sciences.