Guestpost: Marcelo Gleiser

[A month ago, I was at a workshop at Perimeter Institute and I reported on a talk by Marcelo Gleiser. Marcelo's talk was very interesting and thought-stimulating. It touched upon very many different topics, from the process of knowledge discovery to the question of whether we should be searching for a fundamental theory of everything. In my post I expressed my opinion that of course believing in a theory of everything, if you take the name literally, is religion not science because if we had one we would never know if not one day we'd discover something that the theory would not explain. But the whole question of whether it exists is somewhat besides the point, the actual question (for me, the pragmatist) is what is a promising approach to take that will lead to progress.Marcelo has now written a reply to some of the points that came up in my post and the comments, and to some other reactions that he got. This reply can also be found at his blog 13.7.]To Unify Or Not To Unify: That Is (Not) The QuestionMy latest book, A Tear at the Edge of Creation, came out in the US early April. In it, I present a critique of some deeply ingrained ideas in physics. In particular, I examine ...