Mosala replied, “Certainly. And the equations we choose to call a TOE won’t be unique. They’ll be like … say, Maxwell’s Equations for electromagnetism. There are half a dozen equally valid ways Maxwell’s Equations can be written – constants can be shuffled around, different variables used … they can even be expressed in either three or four dimensions. Physicists and engineers still can’t agree as to which formulation is the simplest – because that really depends on what you want to use them for: designing a radar antenna, calculating the behavior of the solar wind, or describing the history of the unification of electrostatics and magnetism. But they all give identical results in any particular calculation – because they all describe the same thing: electromagnetism itself.”

Parker said, “That’s often been said about the world’s religions, hasn’t it? They all express the same basic, universal truths – merely in a different manner, to suit different times and places. Would you concede that what you’re doing is essentially just a part of the same tradition?”

“No. I don’t believe that’s true.”

“But you’ve admitted that cultural factors will determine the TOE we accept. So how can you claim that what you’re doing is any more ‘objective’ than religion?”

Mosala hesitated, then said carefully, “Suppose every human being was wiped off the face of the planet tomorrow – and we waited a few million years for the next species with a set of religious and scientific cultures to arise. What do you think the new religions would have in common with the old ones – the ones from our time? I suspect the only common ground would be certain ethical principles which could be traced to shared biological influences: sexual reproduction, child rearing, the advantages of altruism, the awareness of death. And if the biology was very different, there might be no overlap at all.

“But if we waited for the new scientific culture to come up with their idea of a TOE, then I believe that – however different it looked ‘on paper’ – it would be something which either culture would be able to show was mathematically equivalent in every respect to our TOE … just as any physics undergraduate can prove that all the forms of Maxwell’s Equations describe exactly the same thing.

“That’s the difference. Scientists may start off disagreeing wildly – but they converge on a consensus, regardless of their culture. There are physicists at this conference from over a hundred different countries. Their ancestors three thousand years ago might have had twenty or thirty mutually contradictory explanations between them for any phenomenon you care to think of in the natural world. And yet there are only three conflicting candidate TOEs being presented here. And in twenty years’ time, if not sooner, I’d bet there’ll only be one.”

Parker appeared dissatisfied with this reply, but he took his seat.