"So, the organizing committee have persuaded a number of speakers to hold media sessions where those restrictions won't apply. This morning it's my turn. So if you have anything you'd like to ask me which you're afraid might be ruled out as irrelevant at later sessions… this is your chance."
Mosala came across as relaxed and unassuming; she'd been visibly nervous in the footage I'd seen of earlier appearances—the Nobel ceremony, especially—but if she wasn't yet a seasoned veteran, she was definitely more at ease. She had a deep, vibrant voice—which might have been electrifying if she ever took to making speeches—but her tone was conversational, not oratorial. All of which boded well for Violet Mosala. The awkward truth was, some people just didn't belong on a living room screen for most of fifty minutes. They didn't
The first few questions came from the science correspondents of the non-specialist news services… who diligently resurrected all the old non sequiturs:
Mosala dealt with all of this patiently and concisely. "A Theory of Everything is just the simplest mathematical formulation we can find which encapsulates all the underlying order in the universe. Over time, if a candidate TOE survives sustained theoretical scrutiny and experimental testing, we should gradually become confident that it represents a kind of
"But that won't make anything 'totally predictable.' The universe is full of systems which we understand completely—systems as simple as two planets orbiting a star—where the mathematics is chaotic, or intractable, and long term predictions will always be impossible to compute.
"And it doesn't mean 'an end to science.' Science is much more than the search for a TOE; it's the elucidation of the relationships between order in the universe at every level. Reaching the foundations doesn't mean hitting the ceiling. There are dozens of problems in fluid dynamics—let alone neurobiology—which need new approaches, or better approximations, not the ultimate, precise description of matter on a subatomic scale."
I pictured Gina at her workstation. And I pictured her in her new home, recounting all her problems and small triumphs to her new lover. I felt unsteady for a moment, but it passed.
"Lowell Parker, Atlantica. Professor Mosala, you say a TOE is the 'simplest mathematical formulation of the underlying order in the universe.' But aren't all these concepts culturally determined? 'Simplicity'? 'Order'? Even the range of formulations available to contemporary mathematics?" Parker was an earnest young man with a Boston accent; Atlantica was a highculture netzine, produced mainly by part-time academics from east coast universities.
Mosala replied, "Certainly. And the equations we choose to call a TOE won't be unique. They'll be like… say, Maxwell's Equations for electromagnetism. There are half a dozen equally valid ways Maxwell's Equations can be written—constants can be shuffled around, different variables used… they can even be expressed in either three or four dimensions. Physicists and engineers still can't agree as to which formulation is the simplest—because that really depends on what you want to use them for: designing a radar antenna, calculating the behavior of the solar wind, or describing the history of the unification of electrostatics and magnetism. But they all give identical results in any particular calculation—because they all describe the same thing: electromagnetism itself."
Parker said, "That's often been said about the world's religions, hasn't it? They all express the same basic, universal truths—merely in a different manner, to suit different times and places. Would you concede that what you're doing is essentially just a part of the same tradition?"
"No. I don't believe that's true."
"But you've admitted that cultural factors will determine the TOE we accept. So how can you claim that what you're doing is any more 'objective' than religion?"
