Well, why would there be fewer than N? There is no general principle that we can impose on the world, it just is, we can only discover what the laws and components of the world are (hopefully). I'm not claiming it's impossible for there to be fewer fields than we think right now. But there is no reason to believe there should be.

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GistNoesis 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Elegance. It's Occam's razor. If we can do with only one field, it's probably it.

It's inductive and abductive reasoning. The one field, and it has lot of mathematical characteristics which makes it unique on its own, and also it is the only one that has a chance to fit, is the e8 field popularized by Garrett Lisi.

If a universe were to be designed based using the e8 Lie algebra as an elemental field, it would look a lot like our universe.

Currently the standard model is a patchwork of field added as experiments for observing particles were possible to realize. The big picture's view is a unified theory which fits perfectly all existing data.

	▲	tsimionescu 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Occam's razor has nothing to do with this, it only applies once you have multiple competing theories - you can't use Occam's razor to decide that a theory "should" exist. Currently, we don't have any theory that works that's any simpler than the SM. So that's the theory that Occam's razor currently tells us must be true, as it's the simplest alternative that actually works.

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HarHarVeryFunny 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not saying fewer fields, but perhaps a more fundamental substrate to reality than fields that fields emerge from. Maybe the N fields are just vibrational modes or attractor dynamics of something simpler.

It seems there has to be a reason WHY there are exactly N fields, and WHY they interact in the ways they do.

Edit: As I noted in another comment, the best explanation may come down to "there are only 100 viable types of universe, and ours is type 42". I'd be happy with that.