This author examines, from an essentialist perspective, what must be involved if we are to have a “theory of everything.” This would include a meeting of the hard and soft sciences, or as Willis Harman put it, “the meeting of science and metaphysics.” James quotes Jared Diamond: “As to the relative importance of hard and soft science for humanity’s future, there can be no comparison…Our survival depends on whether we progress with understanding how people behave” (Diamond, 1987).
This article is dedicated to the late Willis Harman for his outstanding contributions and incomparable leadership during his 19 years as President of The Institute of Noetic Sciences.
“A theory of everything”! No theory could strike a more all-inclusive arc. The questions, then, become: Where and when will a theory be found that includes the unification of the hard and soft sciences? Or, as Wilber (1996) asks, “How close are we to what David Chalmers has called ‘a theory of everything’ – that is, a theory that would unite the hard realities of empirical science with the soft …realities of the interior and conscious domain?” That is the question this brief piece attempts to answer from a bare-bones, essentialist perspective.