On the Future of Total Theory: Science, Antiscience, and Human Candor

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Abstract

All-embracing theories of the nature of the world currently being sought and taught, "total theories," "final theories," "theories of everything," take various forms - physical, biological, mathematical. They explain the theorist proposing the theory as well as us to whom the theory is proposed. They reach out to explain challenges to the theory proposed. They explain the very language in which the theory is expressed and urged, and, as may appear, believed. On the Future of Total Theory addresses what total theory, if believed to be true, would mean for law, and what the presence of law means for total theory. If attention is paid to law and the legal mind in discussions of what views are "scientific" and what "antiscientific," some part of this ongoing argument and conflict may eventually be put aside. The incompatibility of law and a total theory of the world and humanity makes relevant the question of belief on the part of those who develop and teach the theory, the authenticity of their commitment to what they seem to be saying. Lawyers may be well situated to see the tacit assumption in speakers' speaking about the nature of things, that they, the speakers, can use and appeal to human law, and well situated also to see the implications of that assumption for an understanding of what is proposed.

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