Humanity will not arrive at a Grand Unified Theory which describes the origins and processes of the cosmos until it unifies all disciplines, all forms of knowing. Science attempts to explain the universe on its own terms and exclude other, nonscientific types of explanations in its Grand Unified Theories. Yet a comprehensive and satisfactory Grand Unified Theory must allow all disciplines their contributions or a comprehensive explanation of the universe will elude us.

This is true because the cosmos is more than natural law. It has physical aspects explicable by physics, but it also has psychological characteristics which we find present in human beings. It has philosophical traits best explained by philosophy. Science is an offshoot of philosophy, and some theories of cosmology as well as quantum mechanics require the presence of subjective observers. If the universe did not have these additional prisms – ways of knowing – through which the cosmos could be viewed and explained, then these disciplines would not have arisen. To claim that these fields should be excluded from contributing to Grand Unified Theories because they are not subject to experimental validation is to judge these ways of understanding reality as illegitimate. Yet a unified theory requires unified knowledge.

A unity of forces, of interactions, requires that all our ways of understanding be combined. The edges of physics describe processes in which psychological variables are present since observers are present and must be accounted for in every act of observation. These same edges have obvious philosophical implications. There is no observation made without an observer, without ourselves. We are fooling ourselves if we believe we can make an entirely accurate observation without accounting for the observer. The universe is more than the sum of its parts. it is more than inanimate particles and waves. That fact is made obvious by the fact we exist. Perhaps we must create a new, fusion discipline called psy-phi-physics which combines the specialized fields of psychology, philosophy and physics. At certain points along the boundaries of any one of these disciplines, it’s difficult to speak of it without blurring into one of the others. This triangular discipline may help us explain unanswered questions which have confounded specialists in any of the fields separately. Although our position as products of spacetime probably prevent us from ever fully unravelling the mysteries which may be solved only from ‘looking’ outside the spacetime continuum itself, a unified theory of everything can only perhaps be approached by a unity of all knowledge.

© 2025 by Michael Just