Theory of Everything

Further to our research undertaken prior to and during World Cup 2010, WCC is close to devising a football theory of everything. This will be a synthesis of the knowledge generated by our faculties, Arts & Law, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Social Sciences. This theory of everything will present a totalising explanatory framework of football and enable the apprehension of the deepest underlying principles of the game.

When endeavouring to understand football we need to recognize the material underpinnings of the game i.e. that it comprises anthropomorphic agents with a circumscribed range of physical capacities and options, interacting within spacetime. The space-state complexity of football is very high, but the material basis of the game renders it at least partially subject to computational principles. Therefore, from Physical Sciences, the principles of computation are a component of the theory of everything. Football is a game predicated on embodied individuals moving within a defined area with reference to a specific set of rules.

A significant degree of the complexity of football is based upon the fact that its participants are sentient agents. Underpinning human action are prompts (unconscious and conscious) from the brain. It is vital to understand the biological underpinnings of human action which are shaped by the brain ‚ an organ which has evolved according to the principles of natural selection. Our Life Sciences faculty has demonstrated how evolutionary psychology explains many facets of human behaviour. For example, principles of sexual selection and the drive for status impact upon motivation. We cannot understand human action, including that of footballers, unless we recognize that we are an intrinsic feature of the biological world.

Our Social Sciences faculty has examined the macro-conditions of the social world within which national teams are embedded. Social norms and cultural values both shape and are shaped by the actions of individuals. Structural features of society, such as religious and political formations, are the product of human interaction, but also have a top-down influence upon social settings. Research from this faculty has shown how overarching socio-political values in England (e.g. the primacy of the individual, suspicion of intelligence) may have hampered the success of the national football side.

Our Arts & Law department has explored the principle of emergence. This principle states that instances of micro-level behaviour may aggregate to form higher-level entities which exhibit novel or unpredictable properties. You might want your team to push out when they are protecting a 1-0 lead, but the effects of emergence render this problematic. An off-pitch example was also explored by WCC: spectators in a stand will rise to their feet when the action approaches – even though this does not improve on the view which would have been afforded had they all remained in their seats. Individually the spectators in the stand would recognize that everyone remaining seated is the rational course of action. But this rationality is subverted by properties of the higher group-level when other social factors come into consideration – such as a rational lack of trust that others will remain seated. It should also be noted that emergence has a causal impact both within and between all levels of the theory of everything cited above.

In summary, WCC has almost completed a football theory of everything, incorporating:

• Computation
• Evolutionary psychology
• Socio-political conditions
• Emergence