“If you think this is painful, you should hear their five-minute Mahabharata -as-Jungian-psychobabble.” She shuddered. “But the original remains intact, doesn’t it? And they have a right to their own … interpretation … as much as anyone.” She didn’t sound entirely convinced.

I said wearily, “I don’t know what these people hoped to gain by coming here. Even if they disrupted the conference, all the research has already taken place; it’s all going to be posted on the nets, regardless. And if the whole idea of a TOE offends them so deeply … they can just close their eyes to it, can’t they? They’ve closed their eyes to every other scientific discovery which has failed to meet their stringent spiritual requirements .”

Lee shook her head. “It’s a matter of territorial defense. You must see that. A TOE effectively claims sovereignty over … the universe, and everyone in it. If a conference of lawyers in New York set themselves up as rulers of the cosmos, wouldn’t you be tempted to go and thumb your nose at them, at the very least?”

I groaned. “Physics doesn’t claim sovereignty . Least of all here – where the whole aim is to find the one thing about the universe which physicists and technologists will never have the power to change. Using crude political metaphors like ‘sovereignty’ or ‘imperialism’ is just empty rhetoric; no one at this conference is sending troops to annex the weak force to the strong force. Unification isn’t being legislated or enforced . It’s being mapped .”

Lee said portentously, “Ah, the power of maps —”

“Oh, stop it, you know exactly what I mean! As in a map of the sky, not a map of … Kurdistan. And with no constellations drawn in … or stars named.” Lee smirked, as if she had a much, much longer list of culturally charged attributes in mind, and wasn’t going to let me off the hook until I’d ruled out every one of them. I said, “All right, forget the whole metaphor! But the fact is: exactly the same TOE underlies the universe – and keeps these cultists alive, juggling, and spouting gibberish – whether the evil reductionist physicists are allowed to discover it, or not.”

“Not according to the Anthrocosmologists, it doesn’t.” Lee offered a conciliatory smile. “But – of course, yes, the laws of physics are whatever they are – and half of Mystical Renaissance would concede as much, in suitably evasive and conditional jargon. Most of them accept that the universe rules itself in some … systematic fashion. But they still feel deeply affronted by an explicit, mathematical formulation of that system.