Theory of everything (philosophy)

In philosophy, a theory of everything or ToE is an ultimate, all-encompassing explanation or description of nature or reality. Adopting the term from physics, where the search for a theory of everything is ongoing, philosophers have discussed the viability of the concept and analyzed its properties and implications. Among the questions to be addressed by a philosophical theory of everything are: "Why is reality understandable?" "Why are the laws of nature as they are?" "Why is there anything at all?"

The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer all the important questions in a coherent way, providing a complete picture of the world. Plato and Aristotle could be said to be early examples of comprehensive systems. In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building scope of philosophy is often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, that is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure a priori reason. Examples from the early modern period include Leibniz's monadology, Descarte's dualism, and Spinoza's monism. Hegel's absolute idealism and Whitehead's process philosophy were later systems. At present, work is underway on the structural-systematic philosophy (SSP), to which the following books are devoted: Lorenz B. Puntel, Structure and Being (2008; translation of Struktur und Sein, 2006) and Being and God (2011; translation of Sein und Gott, 2010) and Alan White, Toward a Philosophical Theory of Everything (2014). The SSP makes no claims to finality; it aims to be the best systematic philosophy currently available.

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