ToeQuest

Part I

Since the beginning of humanity, one of the biggest temptations of mankind was the desire to understand: "The universe, its functions, its construction, its beginning and destination, but also, our place in it"

Men tried to explain it in different ways, searching for the answer not only in magic, religion, and the stars but also in philosophy and sciences and nowadays even in UFOs. We would like not only to know how the universe continues to develop and what makes up its ultimate large scale structure. We also want to know why the universe exists, its point of origin, our origin and our place in it.

These kinds of research and endeavors that try to explain the Universe as a whole in one short and understandable way may be called Theories of Everything. (TOE). We can find examples of religious TOE in the Bible, in the Sacred Scriptures of India; (Wedda, Ramayana and Mahabharata) but also in Buddhist and Taoist scriptures in China as well as in every other religion and mythology. The religious answers - although holistic and ultimate - are for some people not adequate because they are not precise. They even seem to avoid the clue of the ultimate questions and finally they do not seem to solve the problem.

For others, convinced of the correctness and exactness of them, these kinds of answers are only a challenge and an invitation to further questions, research and investigations. Although personally, I believe that: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty" (Gen. 1, 1-2), I would like, if possible -following the idea of Saint Augustine "Fides querrens intellectum"- to see how God did it, how the creation was done, how the earth was formless and empty. I don't think that this desire is a negation of the faith or a revolution against the power of God, even if it is a kind of "looking up God's sleeves". Of course, someone could say that I pretend to understand God, but what is wrong with this, as long as I keep in mind that God's thoughts are not my own and God's ways are not mine. It is in order, as long as I am aware of my own limits and of the limitations of my reason, and as long as I don't try to replace the ultimate truths of the faith by the partial -and far from ultimate- truths of my own.

We can find more examples of TOE. For our purposes, we can divide them into three groups:

1. Religious TOE
2. Philosophical TOE - trying to explain the Universe as a whole in a philosophical way
3. Physical TOE - attempting to represent the Universe as a whole in the form of one quite simple mathematical equation using observations and mathematical language.

Let us see, first of all, how the philosophers have been dealing with the problem.

One of the non-religious (but not anti-religious) attempts at answering the above mentioned questions, is certainly the philosophy of nature which tries to create a comprehensive TOE.

Since the time of the first philosophers (seventh and sixth centuries B.C.), people have been trying to find a simple and rational explanation or justification of the Universe as a whole. The first attempt to answer the question "What is the most fundamental principle of everything?" is certainly the Ionian philosophy of nature. This was proposed at the very beginning of philosophical thinking and also at the very beginning of Western Culture and Civilization. I dare say that this is the first attempt of TOE. Thales of Millet (surveyor, mathematician, astronomer and politician) living in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., explained that the water, from which everything emanates and towards which everything will return, is the most fundamental building material of the Universe. In the thinking of Thales, the mythological gods of Oceanos and Thetida were, for the first time, replaced by material bodies and forces. The fantastic explanations were replaced by materialistic and rational ideas.

This was the first non-religious and non-mythological attempt to understand the Universe -- to gather totality in one simple and understandable concept. In this way, the first Theory Of Everything (TOE) was postulated.