The Impossibility of an Absolute Theory of Everything

A final theory of everything becomes philosophically problematic when scientific unification is enlarged into a claim of absolute closure. The stronger claim assumes that the object of knowledge can be rendered as a complete, closed, and theoretically exhaustible totality. The present argument rejects that assumption under explicit epistemological and ontological premises. Physical unification, domain-level unification, and broad structural theories may remain legitimate. What fails is the stronger ideal of a theory that is final, self-grounding, all-exhaustive, equivalent to the object of knowledge, and able to secure its own conditions of validity. The article argues that the object of knowledge is quantitatively, qualitatively, historically, methodologically, and interpretatively open. Therefore, no finite theoretical form can identify itself with the whole field of possible knowledge. A second limit appears at the metatheoretical level: a theory may describe or encode parts of its own rule-system, yet the validity of its truth-conditions, language, inference, applicability, and justificatory standpoint cannot be secured by internal description alone. The conclusion is conditional and precise: under the stated premises, an absolute theory of everything is impossible, while non-absolute scientific unification remains untouched.