The General Theory of Everything (Polish: Ogólna Teoria Wszystkiego) is a sarcastic coinage of Stanisław Lem introduced in 1966. The biographical sketch of Ijon Tichy in "The Twenty-eighth Voyage" of Tychy's Star Diaries says that a grandfather of Ijon, Jeremiasz Tichy, "decided to create the General Theory of Everything, and nothing stopped him from doing this".
Apart from being a precursor of the term "Theory of Everything," the term GTE was used to characterize Lem's essays of fundamental character, such as The Philosophy of Chance and Science Fiction and Futurology, as well as the pseudoscientific work of Polish scifi writer Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg, Jednolita teoria czasoprzestrzeni (1990)
References
- Krzysztof J. Kilian , "Sny o teoriach ostatecznych a problem przyszłości filozofii, ("Dreams about Ultimate Theories and the Problem of the Future of Phylosophy") ΣΟΦΙΑ, no. 8, 2008
- An annotation to Filozofia przypadku. Tom 1
- "Fantastyka i futurologia", at Lem's official website
- Jan Czerniawski, "Świat według Snerga", Nowa Fantastyka, July 1991
- Lech Keller, "Przyczynek do biografii Stanisława Lema" (retrieved February 16, 2020), Acta Polonica Monashiensis (Monash University: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) Volume 3 Number 2, R&S Press, Melbourne, Vic., 2019, p. 9
