---- By J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club
----------- For the Carnap Corner.
--- Roger Bishop Jones has used "theory of everything" in both his website and in open discussion in hist-analytic (posts filed). I, too!
So here this historical piece: and you can imagine that that great grandfather's name was "Carnapus Griceus".
From wiki, 'theory of everything':
"A great-grandfather of
Ijon Tichy — a character from
a cycle of Stanisław Lem's
science-fiction stories of 1960s --
was known to work on
the "General Theory of Everything"".
JLS
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Also from wiki: now for the Grecian/Gricean connection:
ReplyDelete"Since ancient Greek times,
philosophers have speculated
that the apparent diversity of
appearances conceals an
underlying unity, and
thus that the list of
forces might be short,
indeed might contain
only a single entry."
==== I'm furthering these links for at least two reasons:
(i) problems with Carnap's pluralisms as I see them. It may seem that Grice would have objected to such as "theories of everything". Surely there can be only ONE (TRUE) theory of everything, so...
(ii) meta-philosophical problems. Grice calls things 'theory theory'. So it would seem that Carnap and Grice would agree that it is up to, let's say, the philosopher, or someone (perhaps a member of "The Vienna Circle Institue", there is one, on Museum Street, Vienna, I find), to deal with pretty abstract questions that may well be dubbed "theory of everything" -- or 'anything' as I may prefer -- and 'grand', too, alla Lem 1964, "Ijon Tichy".