On the risk of premature unification
History and Philosophy of Physics
2019-10-02 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
Although the wish to unify theories into something more fundamental is omnipresent and compelling, nonetheless, in a sense, theories must first be unifiable. The reasons for the success of the unification of electricity and magnetism into a theory of electromagnetism are contrasted with the reasons for the failure of the Einstein-Maxwell unification of gravitation and electromagnetism and the attempts of quantum gravity to unify Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum field theory. The difference between a unification of two theories, a concatenation of them, and the existence of a formal analogy between them is also discussed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1811.06068,
title = {On the risk of premature unification},
author = {D Delphenich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.06068},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
15 pages, Submitted to conference proceedings of Vigier 11 conference in Liege, Belgium