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Philosophy of science

Theories of almost everything

Nature volume 455, pages 884–885 (2008)Cite this article

A provocative contribution to the logic of science extends the theorems of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing, and bears on thinking about prediction, the standard model of particles, and quantum gravity.

Since 1620, when Francis Bacon's Novum Organum set out the basic guidelines, the task of science has been to condense multiple observations into brief, general descriptions of natural phenomena. This process, called induction, helps us understand and predict the world around us. Enquiries into the limits of science1 have involved asking questions such as “Can we know everything about the natural world?”, which have so far gone unanswered. Writing in Physica D, David Wolpert2 has made headway in this direction by demonstrating that the entire physical Universe cannot be fully understood by any single inference system that exists within it.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. P.-M. Binder is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Hilo, Hawaii 96720, USA, and at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics, University of Texas, Austin. pbinder@hawaii.edu,

    P.-M. Binder

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  1. P.-M. Binder
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Binder, PM. Theories of almost everything. Nature 455, 884–885 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/455884a

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