# God Particle Question left unanswered: How will we find it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 6, 2009, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-particle-question-left-unanswered-how-will-we-find-it/488542 "2009-03-06T16:32:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-particle-question-left-unanswered-how-will-we-find-it/488542/21 "2009-03-08T18:46:51Z")
“It’s amazing all this is happening when Lauren is out of town.” ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-particle-question-left-unanswered-how-will-we-find-it/488542/22 "2009-03-08T22:28:01Z")
> [@jakesteele](#): > > As kind of an aside or a bit of an extension, if you will, I got to thinking about if we did resolve TOE, what then? What else would there be to know after TOE? This has already been answered pretty well above, but I’ll give my answer anyway. Here’s the thing: Just because a so-called “theory of everything” explains the fundamental _building blocks_ of everything, it doesn’t mean it actually lets you _understand_ everything. I mean, societies are composed of individual human beings, and those human beings are made of of organic molecules (DNA, proteins, lipids, etc.), and those molecules are made of atoms which are composed of electrons, protons and neutrons, the latter two of which are made up of quarks and all of which _might_ be made of strings. But even if we understand strings (or whatever), do you really think this will automatically tell us everything about nuclear physics, everything about atomic physics, everything about organic chemistry, everything about molecular biology, everything about human physiology, and everything about sociology? Of course not. As P.W. Anderson put it, “The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.” I recommend his article on the subject, available here in .pdf format: [“More is Different” by P.W. Anderson [_Science_, New Series, Vol. 177, No. 4047. (Aug. 4, 1972), pp. 393-396]](http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/bblonder/phys120/docs/anderson.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![astronerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/48db29/32.png) [@astronerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astronerd)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-particle-question-left-unanswered-how-will-we-find-it/488542/23 "2009-03-09T15:00:13Z")
Because this discussion has gotten much too serious, I feel the need to point folks at the Large Hadron Rap, by a whole bunch of grad students that worked at CERN while the LHC was being built: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1431471 Verse 3 or 4 actually has some explanation of the Higgs. Enjoy! ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2009, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-particle-question-left-unanswered-how-will-we-find-it/488542/24 "2009-03-10T13:13:30Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > … A ToE would be wonderful, but thinking that it ends anything misses a big point. “You know better than that, Adrian. Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends.” - Dr. Manhattan, who knew from particles [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-particle-question-left-unanswered-how-will-we-find-it/488542.md?page=1)