Reductionism and Theory of Everything

Madhusudhan Pandey
November 2019

In the philosophy of science, reductionism advocates that all the properties of a system under the
study can be explained in terms of its fundamental constituents and interactions. On the other hand,
emergence or anti-reductionism takes a position on holism; there are several systems in nature that should
be considered as a whole and not with fundamental constituents. Ionian philosophers were pioneers in
the history of reductionism. They had a conception of reducing nature to four elements, earth, water,
air, and fire. Similarly, Ernst Mayr, one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologist, claims
that everything in nature can be reduced or fully understand with the help of physics or biology as a
reductionistic view (Mayr et al., 2004, p. 67-80). The belief on vital force theory was outdated once it was
found that the biology of living organisms can be explained from the molecular point of view. For example,
the organic material could be synthesized in the laboratory from chemical reactions. The outdated vital
force theory is one of the examples to most reductionist that complex phenomenon can be reduced over
time when sufficient arguments and fundamental theory is available. Furthermore, from the reductionist
viewpoint, Rene Descartes (Treatise on Man (1648)), one of the pioneers on reductionistic conceptions of
life, explains on the reduction of life to the behavior of animals and plants. For example, the behavior
of animals can be entirely reducible to the physical mechanism by Vaucanson 1 mechanical duck. On the
other hand, from the anti-reduction viewpoint (Thomas Henry Huxley, 19th century English biologist,
and anthropologist), the wetting property of water cannot be applied to its constituents, hydrogen, and
oxygen.
The four concepts of reduction is explained in (Hoyningen-Huene, 1991); Ontological, Epistemological,
Explanatory, and Methodological reduction. When the study is carried out from its whole component to
its parts, Ontological reduction concerns whether the elementary constituents and interactions of parts
and the whole are same or not. Epistemological reduction concerns whether redefinition and derivation of
the whole component can be done from its constituent parts provided that there are suitable initial and
boundary conditions with supplementary assumptions. Explanatory reduction conceptualized on whether
the events or process of study applies to both the whole and its parts or not. Finally, the concepts that
are not included in former reduction types are covered in Methodological reduction. The methodological
reduction may or may not be reductionistic. For example, heuristic algorithms may or may not be
considered as reductionistic. If the heuristic algorithms are unable to supply complete information about
the properties of the system under reduction then it is called analysis rather than reduction (Mayr et al.,
2004, p. 67-80).
Theory of everything is one of the most prominent ontological reductionistic views in the history of
science and mathematics. The concept of theory of everything arose after Einstein thought of the unifi-
cation of general relativity with Maxwellian electromagnetism. Einstein coined the unification of gravity
and electromagnetism as unified field theory (UFT) or later after the development of quantum field theory
called as classical unified field theory. After discoveries of weak and strong nuclear forces the unification
of gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong forces was not possible with classical mechanics. The force
carriers for gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces are graviton, photon, gluons, and
W and Z bosons. Several attempts were made for the unification of these forces together. Physicists
and mathematicians were able to unify weak force and electromagnetism together as a electroweak theory
using quantum field theory. Physicists believed that electroweak theory can be combined together with a
strong nuclear force. Still, unification problems persist on unifying electroweak theory and strong force.
The Ontological reductionistic view Einstein once posed for unified field theory in the late 1920s for
general relativity and electromagnetism, was again reduced together to unify other fundamental forces
commonly called as the Theory of Everything or sometimes alias name is coined as Ultimate theory.
1 Vaucanson was a French inventor who designed mechanical duck that could resemble a biological duck. The concepts
of automaton, devices that could perform a task based on predefined sequential order perpetually, is coined to Vaucanson.
The duck, often called as Digestion Duck, was destroyed in a fire in 1879. Vaucanson believes that the Digestion Duck
would be possible in the future.

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 Einstein was one of the pioneers of a reductionistic view on unifying fundamental forces. UFT was
believed that it could explain the behavior of all physical entities in the universe, from the motion of
stars to the motion of the electron around the nucleus, from spiral galaxies to atomic clouds. The
search for UFT began after Einstein published his paper on general relativity. The sole purpose of
Einstein was to unify general relativity and electromagnetism (McVittie, 1929). During the period of
UFT, only gravity and electromagnetism were discovered. Without the inclusion of general relativity,
the unification of gravity with electromagnetism was reported from the work of Gustav Mie (1912) and
Ernst Reichenbacher (1916) (Ashtekar et al., 2003, p. 105-106). However, this unification of Newtonian
gravity with Maxwellian electromagnetism was later reduced by Einstein to a more general unification
theory with unifying general relativity and Maxwellian electromagnetism. This was the Ontological
reductionist view of Einstein rather than Methodological. In (Mittelstraß, 2012, p. 49), it is stated that
the problematic concepts when replaced with unproblematic concepts result in more general theories. For
example, Newtonian gravity could not describe the perihelion of the planet Mercury. However, general
relativity was fundamental to explain the gravity, from motion of planets around the stars to spiral
galaxies, to the planet Mercury’s motion, and falling of an apple towards the Earth. Thus, the reduction
of Newtonian gravity to more general relativity is an ontological reduction.
The general relativity uses Riemannian geometry for formulating laws of gravity which is sort of
assuming curvature in space-time due to massive celestial objects. Einstein, with the help of Arthur
Eddington, even proved the bending of light due to gravity in 1919 (Coles, 2001). However, Maxwellian
electromagnetic fields fit more into general geometry. Even the ordinary Riemannian geometry could not
solve the problem of unification. Several physicists and mathematicians worked on this unification besides
Einstein. The work of Hermann Weyl, Arthur Eddington, and Theodor Kaluza is noted most (Goenner,
2004). Hermann Weyl worked mostly on gauge theory where he took a infinitesimal geometry that
could generate a vector field containing both gravitational and electromagnetic fields. The infinitesimal
geometry helped him to the use of linear metric elements rather than curvatures while formulating laws
of gravity. Weyl found different sets of field equations other than that of Einstein general relativity
but for both gravitational and electromagnetic fields (Ashtekar et al., 2003, p. 100-103). However, the
mathematical beauty of Weyl’s work was later claimed by many unified filed theorists, including Einstein,
being complex containing higher-order field equations. The gauge theory later used in quantum field
theory to describe particle interactions using Feynmann’s diagrams (Strassler, 1992). In a way, classical
gauge theory was reduced to more general quantum field theory which physicists believed to unify forces
together in nature and indeed help later for unifying weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. The
problem of Riemannian geometry’s application to electromagnetic fields was solved by Kaluza using five-
dimensional cylindrical world where four spatial dimensions and one time dimension were considered. The
approach of using five-dimensional space was applicable to both fields of gravity and electromagnetism.
However, Kaluza’s five-dimensional approach to unification was insufficiency to define singularity. This
theory did not impact on Einstein’s work on unification. The work of Kaluza was later enhanced by
Oscar Klein and the theory was named Kaluza-Klein theory (Podolanski, 1950). And later, this theory
was reduced to explain the behavior of relativistic quantum field theory (Chen, 2005). The problem
of unification in a more general way was studied by Eddington using affine geometry. Rather using
metric-tensor Eddington showed that fields vector can be transported parallelly between two points
in the curvature. The work of Eddington was later difficult for physicists to follow up and further
extension of Eddington’s work was stopped. Einstein combined Eddington’s affine geometry with metric-
tensors, which he had used for postulating theories behind general relativity, into metric-affine theory.
However, in general relativity metric-affine theory showed that gravitational fields were symmetric while
electromagnetic fields were anti-symmetric (Einstein, 1923). This metric-affine theory of Einstein was
limited to explain the phenomenon in space-time geometry. As a concluding remark, in (Einstein, 1923, p.
449), Einstein advocates that using affine geometry there is no noticeable electrical densities in space-time,
and further, the structure of electrons are unidentified.
In the period of Einstein when he was working with unified theory two other fundamental forces
were not discovered; strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force based on quantum theory. The weak
nuclear force was proposed by Enrico Fermi in 1933; he discovered that beta decay could be explained by
four-fermions interactions. On the other hand, the strong nuclear force was discovered in the early 1970s.
The Einstein unified field theory did not include consideration of these forces. The late 20th century then
interrupted the classical unification of gravity and electromagnetism. Many physicists were demotivated
working with a classical unified theory that was proposed by Einstein. Now, the unification of forces was
considered with four fundamental forces in nature; gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear force and
strong nuclear force. The quantum theory was able to unify weak nuclear force and electromagnetism

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called electroweak theory. The electroweak theory was partially unified by Sheldon Glashow in 1963.
Extension to this work, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg showed the unification of weak force and
electromagnetism with the help of Higgs mechanism (Xin, 2007). For this discovery, Glashow, Salam,
and Weinberg received Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979. Later, Glashow and Howard Georgi extend the
work of electroweak theory to unify strong nuclear force often termed as Georgi-Glashow model (Georgi
and Glashow, 1974) which was coined as the first Grand Unified Theory (Langacker, 1981), however,
unaccepted till date.
The current problem with the unification of electroweak force and strong force lies in the energy scale
involved with current particle accelerators. Current particle accelerator, Large Hadron Collider (LHC),
is of 6.5 TeV which is unable to produced particles that have an energy scale required for unification
of electroweak force and strong force (Calmet, 2010, p. 22). There have been several proposed particle
accelerator to increase the energy scale; Very Large Hadron Collider (VLHC), Circular Electron Positron
Collider (CEPC), Future Circular Collider, etc.
Now many physicists and mathematicians in the state-of-the-art of quantum field theory, unlike
Einstein, believed that unification of three fundamental forces; electroweak and strong nuclear force is
possible with high energy particle accelerators. As a transition, thinking to unify general relativity with
other forces, physicists believe that general relativity if could be explained with the help of quantum
mechanics, termed as quantum gravity , could solve the problem of unification. However, mathematical
difficulties called as re-normalization in particle interactions still persists using quantum gravity (Kallosh,
1975). Physicists believe that graviton’s, the force carrier for gravity, interaction to electroweak and strong
is the difficulties in lower dimensions.
Diametric to quantum gravity, prominent physicists like Brian Greene, Michio Kaku and Edward
Witten are working on String Theory and they believe that interaction of graviton with other force
carrier would be possible. The idea behind string theory is that the force-carrying particles are vibrating
strings interacting together to produce other particles. String theorist believe that the energy scale of
vibrating strings can only be realized in higher dimensions and microscopic level around Plank length.
The frequency of vibrating strings is unique in space-time which describes the uniqueness of each particle.
Physicists now believe that graviton is a state of some unique frequency of vibrating string which could
then help to unify particle physics with gravity. Hence, it is believed that, in future, fundamental forces
in nature could be unified with the help of vibrating strings at higher dimensions; graviton is the result of
considering eleven dimensions in string theory around Plank length. Many physicists and mathematicians
now believed that string theory is a path for unifying fundamental forces that could lead to the theory
of everything.
Current research include that dark matter, which consists of 85% of universe mass, is unable to
be explained with the help of four fundamental forces. Recently, scientist from Hungary at Institute
of Nuclear Research, predict that a new type of boson, considered to be fifth force carrier that could
explain the phenomenon of dark matter (McRae, 2019). The new force carrier is called as X17 particle
(Krasznahorkay et al., 2019). It is believed that electroweak force, strong force and this new fifth force
carried by X17 particle can be unified together and the mystery behind the universe regarding dark matter
problem could be explained (Johnson, 2019). However, physicist are still unaware whether gravity could
be unify to other forces or not.
In conclusion, the theory of everything is still an unsolved mystery. The path paved by Einstein to
unify general relativity with electromagnetism is still considered for unification to achieve what physicists
called today as Grand Unified Theory. From the history about the unified field theory, quantum gravity,
string theory and X17 particle discovery recently, it can be inferred that Einstein has a very reductionistic
view on unifying fundamental forces. The Ontological reductionist view of Einstein can be inferred from
his grand aim of of unifying forces of nature. The path of Einstein followed by Wely, Kaluza and
Klein lead them to discover gauze theory and Kaluza-Klein theory which could explain the behavior
of particle interactions in quantum mechanics, in a way classical mechanics was reduced to quantum
mechanics. The reduction of Riemannian geometry used by Einstein to explain electromagnetism, though
the electromagnetic filed was anti-symmetric as opposite to general relativity, later help to unify the weak
nuclear force with electromagnetism formulating electroweak theory. This shows that though Einstein did
not use quantum theory for the unification of general relativity and electromagnetism, the path paved by
Einstein for unification leads to unifying electromagnetism and weak nuclear force as electroweak theory.
The reduction principle of Einstein for unifying the fundamental forces still persist in modern physics.
The development of quantum gravity and string theory are products of the reductionistic view of Einstein
and indeed the theory of everything is a reductionistic theory.

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