Entering the world of elementary particles (ie, the Higgs’ particle of particle physics)

When particle physics enters the world of elementary particles, it enters Alice’s wonderland. Below is a scheme that conflates the elementary particles it claims to have found with those it merely hypothesizes (from Wikipedia).

Contemplating this scheme, we can see that there are many kinds of things, but not a variation in any of the properties of the things of the different kinds to be found. It is thus a pure classification scheme conflating empirical classification with imagination. As a pure classification scheme, we can expect that it ends in paradox (as Bertrand Russell demonstrated with his paradox), and if we look at the bottom on the right hand side (above Forces), we find the paradox as the kind of particle it calls “Theory of Everything”. This kind of “particle” is formulated as a singularity, although the scheme organizes kinds of particles, as if this kind of particle in some mysterious way can singularize from its kind. If this inconsistency is not a case of a bold conflation of particle with kind, then I’m Santa.

This inconsistency may be obscured by the fact that we can express kinds both as singularities and pluralities (like human and humans), but only together with a great deal of wish-thinking. No, the message from this inconsistency is simply that the “Theory of Everything” has to be several “Theories of Everything”. Approaching Russell’s paradox from “the back side” doesn’t change it, but just makes it more difficult to understand.

It is true that a solution of Russell’s paradox requires accepting paradoxes as realities, eg, as “a true tree of life” or as “Higgs particle”, but, unfortunately, accepting paradoxes as realities doesn’t turn paradoxes into realities, but just turns our reasoning paradoxical. We can change how we perceive reality, but not the facts of reality, and Russell’s paradox is a fact of reality. We can thus turn ourselves in-side-out attempting to change this fact without changing anything else than our own comprehension of reality. Some battles are simply lost. (Like a worm on a hook…)

Why pretend that there is a consistent “Theory of Everything” when Bertrand Russell demonstrated already a hundred years ago that there isn’t? The only principal resistence resides in acknowledging that truth is not one, but many. Monotheism is factually impossible. Hail polytheism!