A Review of Mark McCutcheon's The Final Theory:
Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy
Universal Publishers, USA, 2002.
Reviewer: Douglass A. White, Ph.D.
I have been reading through Mark McCutcheon's The Final Theory (FT). This
prophetic-sounding title may attract a number of people to read his thought-provoking
book, so I decided to write a review to assist readers in evaluating Mr. McCutcheon's
ideas and to use the opportunity to further explore and unfold some of my own thoughts
on these matters. In the course of this review I will often refer to aspects of Standard
Theory (ST) and some other current "nonstandard" approaches, such as Palmer's Avatar
system. I will also often refer to the principles of Observer Physics (OP), which is
what I call my interpretation of how things work -- my personal Theory of Everything.
If I seem at times strongly critical of Mr. McCutcheon's ideas, that is simply the role of a
reviewer and is all in the spirit of constructive inquiry into how we can clarify for
everyone, including ourselves, what is really going on. My comments may also
encourage him to refine his ideas further.
(Also, in this article I will refer to Mr. McCutcheon as McC, no offense intended. I
suppose we could read this abbreviation as "m-c-squared" or "Mac-See".)
McC's book interests me for two reasons. First, he brings up and attempts to explain a
lot of major problems that modern physicists do not handle very well. FT includes an
excellent checklist of touchy issues in physics compiled by McC, -- though it is by no
means a complete list. Second, McC presents in his book a creative new theory that
gives us a new viewpoint from which to study some of the core problems of physics.
Creating a new viewpoint for studying a discipline can be a very useful exercise
regardless of how well the theory shakes out in the end. For me it is helpful to refine
and clarify the insights of OP, my pet theory of the universe. However, unlike McC, I
do not propose to rewrite ST physics on the basis of a totally new principle or force. I
work with what is already there, adding only a stronger emphasis on the role of the
observer. My OP theory is simply that a careful study of consciousness -- something we
all experience -- will add to our understanding of how the physical world works and
contribute to solving some of the major issues that remain poorly understood.
In the last section of his book, McC attempts to interpret some of the Big Questions (such
as the nature of subatomic particles, antimatter, mass-energy conversion, black holes, the
Big Bang, the expanding universe, and the nature of time) in terms of his FT. Just for
starters, here are some Big Questions for McC that he fails to address in his book but
which beg for answers if we are to accept his FT.
* McC believes everything is made of electrons. If everything is made of electrons,
what ARE electrons?
* Why do electrons exist and how are they made? Do they have structure?
* Why do they expand?