Theory of Everything and the Cup of Glass
Theory of everything - its an obsession. More notably, the pursue of knowledge is a noble cause in mankind, as declared by philosopher
Jacob Bronowski, that "knowledge is our destiny". Whether its a healthy preoccupation or not, that is not important. So long as its ends justify its means. That it is innately progressive suffices itself to perpetuate… So grind in your brain juice, pump in the R&D fund, because it’ll benefit you, and your offsprings… period.
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While I’m not opposed to development, and this article is never near the discussion on research methodology, rather touching lightly on epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge, and of course my very subjective sentiments pertaining to this topic..
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Harking back to the subject proper. That deterministic attitude was harbored when I completed reading this textbook, ‘World Politics-Trends and Transformation’ which left me feeling pretty much empty and disappointed. 
Its lack of solid, concrete explanation of how the turn of world events transpired is only the tip of an iceberg of a wider realisation that will hit me. Bluntly put, it teaches two modes of thinking, of how the world unfolds, namely ‘realism’ and ‘liberalism’. Both are fundamentally opposing, and neither one offers a complete explanation of say why Nations compete in some areas while co-operate in others.. A dialectical process of arriving at a ‘truth’ is difficult because embracing one would discount the another, its just so mutually exclusive to its bones! Hence, any hopes of predicting future trends is thoroughly neutralised if you juxtapose the two schools of thought… In sum, its unsettled, and I’m cheated of $41.48
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This feeling of ambiguity struck me and is reminiscence to the one I had when I studied an introductory module to physics. Do you describe the world in Quantum Mechanics or Gravity? Ohh, no problem.. you use both! QM for the very small, and Gravity for the humongous. What happens to the in-between you ask… Sorry, there’s no medium size. Either small or big. Then slowly, they start to move in both directions. The particle way of explanation soon encompasses a new species, graviton! And Gravity becomes possible to be described in the framework of quantum field theory. Well, at least in physics, its less compartmentalized than in political science.
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OK… here’s a simpler analogy illuminated by my wise friend Chin Khiang. He told me, if a glass of water put on a table, what would the different people say? The economist would ask, what is the opportunity cost of filling it with water? The chemist would ask, is that H20? And the psychologist, what is the motivation of placing that glass…? Who’s right? In truth, all may arrive at different sets of ‘theories’ because they think differently, and the fact of a single glass of water does not necessarily represent one common understanding. All are correct, everyone gets one mark! =)
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Although it can be said that the comparison is asymmetric, that arguing on the glass of water is not the same because it is discussing on different issues(duck and chicken) while theorising within a subject is sound and should be encouraged because it refines its knowledge. However, one should remember that sometimes things turn out differently in the first place because the beam of knowledge is shone at a different angle, notwithstanding its on the same ‘glass’ or not. Knowledge is knowledge, all the different branches and specialisation that we see today such as Biology, Physics, Social Science can be traced back to its philosophical origin in Greek, although they were probably not called as such as it is now…
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So, what was underneath that iceberg that sinked me ultimately. It is the realisation that the world is not seen and need not be described in a Theory of everything… it is big enough to accommodate both school of thoughts, and thinking singularly risks itself of being narrow-minded. Nevertheless, it will forever remain a very rigorous human obsession and perhaps just…
a self-validating truth? (that’s another story)
Plato: knowledge is the subset of truth, very much influenced by beliefs
