That is why I do not expect an uncontested UFT: No mathematical equation can encompass all reality, just as no theology can encompass all truth. The best we finite mortals can do is to produce a reasonable approximation.
I have an unfinished monograph on this subject: Models are not Real (obvious, yet overlooked). Mathematicians and physicists continually fall into the same trap as theologians: looking for the perfect description of Reality, thus confusing the Model with the Real.
Only a reflexive syllogism qualifies as that (I am that I am; to wit, I Am that I Am: The Lord of Creation.)
When one falls into that trap, then all models become false or defective except one, rather than all being relatively more or less useful.
My favorite example from my nerdly childhood: A 1/72 P-51 is 100% a model, just as is a 1/48 P-51, even though the latter is capable of greater accuracy. Both are wholly models. The 1/72 does not lose any of its “modelness” because it is simpler; it only loses some accuracy. The smaller scale one is not, say, 50% a model by comparison; it is as much a model as the other; further, both are wholly not equatable with the real. (Even a 1/1 P-51 model is not real if it is not in fact an actual P-51.)
The Bohr Atom does not lose any of its “modelness” just because it is surpassed in sophistication by Orbital Theory or Quantum Mechanics. It is not False to their True; it is simply less accurate, but still useful. I would not use QM to describe atomic reality to a young child. (I do not even like to use it for myself!) I love the Bohr Atom for such an application.
(Please do not confuse the above argument with advocacy of moral relativism, which I entirely reject.)
True enough. Moral approximation isn’t the same as moral relativism. The former doesn’t try to create its own little world; the latter does.