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almost everything) that can be observed in the physical universe. In the light of history, this is a very risky proposition. The U.S. Congress turned down a multibillion dollar request from the high-energy physics community for a Superconducting Supercollider Accelerator. The scientists had argued that with the new accelerator, they would be able to find the Higgs particle, postulated to be the last particle needed to complete the Grand Unified Theory. Some even called it "the God particle," but Congress didn't buy it.
In an inaugural lecture at Cambridge University in 1980, the distinguished astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said:
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I want to discuss the possibility that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved in the not-too-distant future: say by the end of the century. By this I mean that we might have a complete, consistent, and unified theory of the physical interactions that would describe all possible observations [emphasis added].
We consider this to be an extraordinarily optimistic view. If psychic abilities are to be considered as part of this program, he had better get cranking on his theory. After twenty-five hundred years of scientific inquiry, we have learned that there is, in general, no one answer to anything  only successive approximations, and a handful of good-looking metaphors. Some lessons from history:
Zeno of Elea  The ancient Egyptians and Greeks knew a great deal about the way the world works. They correctly calculated the diameter of the earth, and they knew that it was spherical. They knew the sun was the center of the solar system, and they calculated the times of eclipses. The Greek scholar Pythagoras was a master of geometry and could calculate the areas of regions, and predict the effects of floods. He felt, with some justification, that he understood all that the eye could survey. He was also the head of a large and powerful mystery school in Athens. At about that same time, 450 B.C., the philosopher Zeno came upon the scene to challenge Pythagoras. Working with his teacher Parmenides, this great intuitive genius

 
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