1 Unity as Discovery

In popular accounts of string theory, one phrase recurs with almost liturgical force: it “reveals the underlying unity of forces.” The metaphor is seductive. It suggests that nature has always harboured a hidden oneness, a secret order beneath appearances, and that physicists — like latter-day mystics — are finally unmasking it. Unity, here, is framed as an essence: pre-given, waiting to be discovered, like a diamond buried under layers of rock.

But this construal smuggles in a profound ontological error. It mistakes a symbolic achievement for a natural given.

Unity is not something lying beneath multiplicity, waiting to be unveiled. It is something stitched together through construal. What we call “unification” in physics is always an achievement of symbolic architecture — the work of aligning domains, constructing bridges, and forging new frameworks that can coordinate what once appeared disparate. Maxwell’s equations did not discover that electricity and magnetism were secretly one; they provided a frame in which electric and magnetic phenomena could be seen as aligned instances of a common structure. Likewise, the electroweak theory did not peel back reality’s veil to expose a hidden fusion. It built a symbolic system in which weak and electromagnetic interactions could be represented as different construals of a single potential.

String theory’s promise of ultimate unity continues this pattern, but the rhetoric shifts. Here, unity is elevated from a local achievement into an ontological inevitability: the universe is unified, and our task is simply to discover the theory that finally reflects this truth. This is a classic case of absolutisation. It takes the reflexive success of certain symbolic architectures and mistakes them for metaphysical necessity.

Relationally, the more precise point is this: every claim of unity is perspectival. It depends on a particular construal, a choice of cut, a system for framing potential. To instal unity as an essence — an ontological bedrock awaiting discovery — is to erase the constitutive role of construal itself.

Seen in this light, unity is not a truth that science reveals. It is a value that science enacts. It reflects a deep cultural desire for coherence, simplicity, and order, a desire that has shaped not only the development of physics but its metaphors, institutions, and myths. The promise of “discovering unity” is thus not a neutral description of reality. It is a symbolic lure — a narrative that legitimises the search for totalising theories by projecting our own reflexive architectures back onto nature.

The danger is clear. When unity is treated as discovery rather than construction, we blind ourselves to the perspectival character of our models. We risk mistaking a fragile symbolic alignment for an eternal truth. And we reproduce, uncritically, the myth that science speaks from nowhere, uncovering reality as it really is.

From a relational stance, the corrective is simple but radical: unity is not uncovered but achieved. Every unification in physics is an artefact of symbolic work, a perspectival stitching of domains. That does not make it illusory; it makes it contingent, reflexive, and subject to transformation. String theory, if it achieves anything, will not reveal a pre-existing unity of forces. It will enact a new symbolic architecture in which certain alignments become possible, persuasive, and productive.

The question is not whether unity is “out there.” The question is how, when, and for whom unity is made.