The World Formula

Surely the reader knows the feeling of having come too late. Surely the reader has experienced situations where he has cursed a certain lack of knowledge, be it his own or of humankind in general. To the open-minded reader there is no need to explain what kind of situations these are, situations where one would just be willing to give everything only to know the final answer, the reason for our existence, a Theory of Everything, a World Formula. There are many who consider a World Formula to be simply the unification of the greatest theories in physics, namely quantum theory and Einstein's general theory. But the true world formula should contain it all.

The author too had come across situations where he would have given his life to get the answer, but realizing that nobody had this answer ready for the trade, he concluded that there was only one way to get it: he had to find it on his own Maybe there was just this deep-seated and forever unquenchable thirst for fundamental explanations, but honestly speaking, this alone would never have been enough. There also was this very special motivation from somebody else who needed this knowledge. Perhaps this provided the driving force to actually start this million-mile-long journey with the first small--and very tentative--step. This simple question "How to explain the world to my dying child?" probably created more potential and unleashed more resources and will power than any well-paid Princeton position could ever have done.

However, considering all the efforts taken, money spent, disputes fought, papers and books written, and conferences held, it is almost shocking to find that, in principle, the World Formula was already there. It was David Hilbert who wrote it down during the first year of World War I in November 1915. The complexity of the math involved was not the only thing that obscured what should have been obvious. This book explains why nobody had realized his immortal stroke of genius.