Ontological Grounds of the Theory of Everything
The article discusses the problem of building the unified physical theory. Observing the continuity of philosophical tradition in the search for physical principles and analyzing modern approaches and hypotheses that claim to be the “final physical theory”, the authors come to the conclusion that there is a need to provide a more profound ontological justification of physical knowledge and formulate a new metaphysical paradigm. A fundamental physical theory can be built on this base, but this will not be the final “theory of everything”, because the phenomena of life and consciousness cannot be reduced to physical action, and they go beyond physical reality. The task of achieving simplicity and clarity of initial principles in unified description of complex variety of the phenomenal world is presented as a methodological criterion of verity of the theory. This simplicity of initial principles, which is followed by the variety of phenomena, is equivalent to action of simple substance, which creates complexity as internal dynamic structure of indivisible elements and structural diversity of external relations. So, the substantial effect is manifested either as simple physical interaction, or as more complex dynamic phenomena of life and consciousness. A philosophical justification is given for the methodological principle of genesis of physical concepts and the genetic program of building the physical “theory of everything”. This program can be successfully implemented if the metaphysical paradigm is changed and new fundamental entities are introduced. A hypothesis is presented regarding the substantial and informational nature of time. Some new definitions are given: substance is defined as a generator of primary information, the chronal continuum is defined as a fundamental substrate where the effect of substance is manifested, and information is defined as a measure of diversity generated by substance and manifested in the chronal continuum.