The programmes above share a common trait: they seek unification in structure — new symmetries, extra dimensions, discrete geometry. Yet a century of quantum mechanics points to another possible entry point: the act of observation. The measurement problem — why and how a single definite outcome emerges from a superposition of possibilities — remains unsolved. The Copenhagen interpretation, Everett's many-worlds interpretation, QBism, and Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics differ precisely in the role they assign to the observer.
John Archibald Wheeler, one of the great physicists of the 20th century, distilled this intuition into his "it from bit" programme: every element of physical reality derives, in the end, from acts of posing questions and registering binary answers — that is, from observer participation. His delayed-choice thought experiment, later confirmed in the laboratory, showed that what a quantum object "was" in the past depends on the question asked of it in the present. Wheeler spoke of a participatory universe, in which observers are not spectators but participants in the becoming of physical reality.
In the 21st century this line of thought stopped being marginal. Quantum information showed that informational notions — entanglement, the bit, the channel — work as building material for physical theories; the holographic principle tied the geometry of spacetime to information on its boundary; relational quantum mechanics and QBism made the system–observer relation the basic unit of description. Extended Wigner's-friend scenarios, tested experimentally in 2019, sharpened the question of whether facts recorded by different observers can be reconciled. The observer has returned to the foundations of physics — this time as a subject of rigorous analysis.
If this line of reasoning is correct, the difficulties of the classical unification programmes may stem not from a lack of mathematics but from the exclusion of the observer from the description. ODTOE (Observer-Dependent Theory of Everything) is a research programme by Anton Pankratov that makes the opposite move: the observer is introduced as a fundamental primitive rather than a derived object. Its central formula, R = Ô(Ψ), reads: actual reality R is the result of applying the observation operator Ô to the field of potentialities Ψ. The quantum and classical regimes are described as limits of one equation governed by the coherence parameter S.
The positioning matters: ODTOE does not claim that the unification problem is solved. It is one of several contemporary research approaches — with a published formalism (an axiom, six postulates, an operator apparatus), a corpus of ~97 articles, and an empirical programme in development. It should be judged the way any research programme is judged: by internal consistency, explanatory economy, and, ultimately, testable consequences.
ODTOE's goal: to become a theory-of-everything candidate
ODTOE is being built precisely as a candidate for the theory of everything and for the unification of physics. The programme constructs a single formal metatheory from which the known theories — quantum mechanics, general relativity, the Standard Model — are to be derived as special cases. What sets it apart from the classical programmes: unification is sought not in a new symmetry or extra dimensions, but in introducing the observer as a fundamental primitive of physics.
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Unify the foundations
The quantum and classical regimes are described as limits of one equation governed by the coherence parameter S, and gravity and quantum mechanics share a single operator language, R = Ô(Ψ). The incompatibility of the two pillar theories is resolved at the level of a common foundation rather than patched at the boundary.
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Derive the constants from first principles
Instead of measured-but-unexplained parameters — a derivation of fundamental constants from the geometry of self-observation: derivations of the proton-to-electron mass ratio μ ≈ 1836 and the fine-structure constant α⁻¹ ≈ 137 are published, with no adjustable parameters.
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Deliver testable consequences
An empirical programme in development: comparison of derived cosmological fractions with Planck data, predictions for the constants as CODATA values are refined, and an open corpus of ~97 articles exposed to criticism. The programme is prepared to be judged by the same three criteria as any candidate in the table above.
Status as of 2026: a research programme. The formalism is published; the claim to unification is a matter of open verification, not an accomplished fact.