Toward a Meta-Level Theory of Everything

Shapoval, O. (2026). Toward a Meta-Level Theory of Everything. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23082849

Abstract

Any attempt to explain everything already presupposes a conception of what explanation is, what belongs to the domain being explained, and what makes different phenomena intelligible within a common account. A theory can expand its explanatory reach across increasingly broad ranges of phenomena, domains, and levels without exceeding the conceptual framework through which that reach is defined. Its universality may therefore grow in scope while remaining bounded by the principles that determine what counts as fundamental, relevant, and intelligible. This becomes apparent when comprehensive theories are considered across different disciplines. What appears as a Theory of Everything within one domain may leave fundamental questions unresolved in another, and the reverse may also be true. Different disciplines may organize reality through different assumptions about what exists, what is fundamental, what constitutes explanation, and what makes a description adequate. The resulting plurality is therefore a plurality of ways in which reality can become theoretically intelligible, but the intelligibility established within one framework does not necessarily extend to others. This raises the question of whether the ambition of “Everything” can itself be reformulated at a level capable of encompassing the plurality of frameworks through which reality is rendered intelligible. The present essay develops the concept of a Meta-Level Theory of Everything by reconsidering “everything” as a heterogeneous field of descriptions, models, concepts, principles, claims, and comprehensive frameworks through which reality is disclosed and organized. The resulting conception treats universality as a property of coordination across difference, opening a meta-systemic dimension for transdisciplinary approaches to “Everything” without reducing heterogeneous descriptions to a common substantive framework.

1. Introduction to the Problem of “Everything”

The idea of a Theory of Everything (ToE) arises most explicitly within fundamental physics as the ambition to formulate a unified account of the basic constituents, interactions, and laws of nature. In its conventional scientific sense, a ToE is conceived as an ultimate theory of the physical universe, whose formal principles would, at least in principle, provide a unified description of physical phenomena. Laughlin and Pines characterize the Theory of Everything as an ultimate theory of the universe consisting of equations capable of describing all phenomena that have been observed or may eventually be observed (Laughlin and Pines 2000, 28–31). The scientific project of fundamental unification remains intact; the present discussion shifts the question to a different order: how comprehensive description itself changes when it is considered at a more general level.

A useful way to approach this question is through a simple thought experiment. Suppose that a comprehensive account of reality were pursued through fundamentally different modes of theoretical organization. One framework might take physical dynamics as primary; another might organize reality through geometry, symmetry, and invariance; another through computation, information, or formal rules; another through processes and transformation; another through a fundamental ontological principle; and another through relations, organization, levels, and emergence. These possibilities are not purely hypothetical. Existing proposals for Theories of Everything already include approaches that organize comprehensive explanation in markedly different ways. Philosophical Theories of Everything extend the idea of a Theory of Everything beyond fundamental physics and seek comprehensive accounts of reality through philosophical and ontological principles. Structural approaches provide another extension of the conceptual range of such theorizations. Brian D. Josephson’s A Structural Theory of Everything, for example, develops a proposal based on Karen Barad’s agential realism and incorporates self-organization, evolutionary processes, emergence, and interpretive information processing into a broader account of reality (Josephson 2019, 225–235). Alan White’s Toward a Philosophical Theory of Everything explicitly defines “everything” in terms of an unrestricted universe of discourse and develops a systematic philosophical account intended to encompass the full range of philosophical inquiry (White 2014). These examples show that comprehensive scope does not by itself determine the conceptual form through which universality is achieved. A framework can aspire to encompass reality as a whole while defining fundamentality, explanation, and theoretical priority in its own terms.

Beyond the immediate discussion of Theories of Everything, broader discussions within the philosophy of science address the relation between the unity of reality and the plurality of its conceptualizations. Kellert, Longino, and Waters argue that some phenomena may require multiple approaches, and John Dupré’s account of the disunity of science similarly emphasizes the plurality of ways in which the world can be conceptualized while retaining the idea of a unified world (Kellert, Longino, and Waters 2006; Dupré 2024, 1043–1057). Different approaches may select different entities, relations, levels, structures, or processes as fundamental while addressing aspects of the same reality. Scientific pluralism, however, primarily concerns plurality within scientific inquiry and does not by itself establish a framework for coordinating scientific descriptions with philosophical, metaphysical, psychological, or other heterogeneous modes of description. The question can therefore be extended beyond the internal organization of science to the relation among fundamentally different kinds of comprehensive frameworks.

The word “everything” itself requires closer examination. In the expression “Theory of Everything,” it appears to designate an absolute totality, yet the scope and organization of that totality depend in part on the framework through which it is defined. A physical theory may understand everything in terms of fundamental physical phenomena and their governing relations. Other comprehensive frameworks may organize reality according to fundamentally different conceptions of what is primary, explanatory, or theoretically relevant. Their comprehensiveness would not make them equivalent. Nor would comprehensiveness within one framework establish that the framework has exhausted every possible mode in which reality can be theoretically organized. A theory may therefore be universal in scope while remaining particular in the mode through which that universality is constituted.

This raises a distinction between different levels of universality. If fundamentally different frameworks can each organize reality according to their own conceptions of fundamentality, explanation, and description, increasing the scope of one framework does not by itself determine how those frameworks should relate. What exactly is being made universal, and at what level? Conventional ToE research seeks universality primarily at the level of physical explanation. The ambition of universality can, however, extend beyond physical explanation to the theoretical and ontological frameworks through which reality is described. Different theories may each claim comprehensive access to reality, yet the meaning of “everything” depends on whether universality concerns only the phenomena a theory explains or also the plurality of comprehensive ways in which reality can be theorized. In spatial terms, the distinction is between expanding explanatory scope horizontally within a substantive framework and shifting the level of analysis so that different frameworks themselves become objects of coordination.

2. One Reality, Multiple Descriptions

The possibility of different comprehensive descriptions of reality follows once plurality of description is distinguished from plurality of reality. A minimal realist premise is sufficient to formulate this distinction. There may be a reality that exists independently of any particular theory, conceptual scheme, or mode of description. Yet it does not follow that this reality must possess one uniquely exhaustive conceptual language through which it can be represented. The unity of reality and the unity of its description are different claims. A single reality may be approached through different levels, relations, structures, processes, and explanatory purposes. The problem is therefore the relation between one reality and multiple modes of making that reality intelligible.

A potentially partial representation can select certain features of what it describes while leaving others outside its immediate scope, and this selectivity does not by itself make the representation false. Sandra Mitchell’s account of integrative pluralism treats scientific representations as partial and perspectival and remains compatible with realism (Mitchell 2023, 261–297). Michela Massimi’s perspectival realism likewise distinguishes situated knowledge from the reality described, maintaining that states of affairs about the world can be perspective-independent even when scientific knowledge claims are perspective-dependent (Massimi 2018, 342–359). These accounts show that a description can be domain-sensitive, level-sensitive, purpose-sensitive, and conceptually organized while still disclosing something about a reality that is not constituted by the description itself. Partiality does not entail falsity, just as perspectivality does not entail the absence of a reality beyond the perspective.

The distinction between a description and the reality it describes demonstrates that different frameworks may select different entities, relations, structures, processes, or levels as theoretically relevant, and their descriptions may differ substantially in scope and organization. Such differences do not by themselves determine whether one framework is exhaustive, whether another is more adequate, or whether their claims are mutually compatible. Nor does plurality require that all frameworks be treated as equivalent. A physical theory, a psychological framework, a metaphysical system, and a process ontology may organize different aspects of reality through different concepts and explanatory purposes. Their coexistence therefore does not amount to the claim that every description is equally adequate or that every proposition is equally true. At this stage, the relevant point is more basic: plurality of description does not require plurality of reality, and the existence of multiple descriptions does not by itself determine the philosophical status of their differences. Apparent conflicts between descriptions may likewise depend on differences in domain, level, scope, conditions, or conceptual organization; determining whether such a conflict is substantive or only apparent is a further analytical task.

If several descriptions can disclose aspects of one reality without any one of them becoming exhaustive, the limits of universality must be considered at the level of both description and framework. A theory may claim comprehensive scope within its own conceptual and ontological organization while remaining unable to situate another comprehensive framework organized according to different principles. More broadly, a description may disclose a genuine aspect of reality without determining the full range of ways in which that reality can be conceptualized, explained, or related to other descriptions. The issue moves from the plurality of descriptions themselves to the conditions under which universality can extend across different modes of description and the frameworks that organize them.

3. The Limits of Self-Contained Universality

Every theory determines, explicitly or implicitly, a set of conditions under which reality becomes intelligible within its own framework. It identifies what counts as fundamental, which entities and relations are relevant, what requires explanation, which levels of analysis are legitimate, and what forms of evidence or description are admissible. A theory does more than accumulate facts about an independently existing reality: it organizes them through a determinate conceptual and methodological regime that determines what can be admitted as theoretically relevant and what falls outside its scope. Even a theory aspiring to describe reality as a whole expresses its universality through a particular conception of what is fundamental, explanatory, and theoretically relevant. This allows us to distinguish between universality within a framework and universality across frameworks. The first concerns comprehensive explanatory scope within a theory’s own ontology, vocabulary, methodology, and criteria of explanation. The second concerns the capacity to account for the coexistence and relation of different comprehensive descriptions whose fundamental assumptions, vocabularies, ontological commitments, or explanatory principles are not identical. A theory may possess extremely broad explanatory scope while remaining unable to situate another comprehensive theory organized according to different principles. Explanatory comprehensiveness does not entail meta-systemic comprehensiveness.

The distinction between universality within a framework and universality across frameworks corresponds to a distinction between systematic completeness and meta-systemic completeness. Systematic completeness concerns the internal organization of a theory according to its own principles. A system may derive a wide range of phenomena from common principles, unify previously separate explanations, and establish a highly coherent account of its intended domain. None of this necessarily gives it the capacity to locate or relate systems whose fundamental assumptions differ from its own. Meta-systemic completeness concerns that additional capacity: the ability to situate, distinguish, relate, preserve, and, where necessary, reconstruct heterogeneous systems within a common architecture. Such a framework must be able to represent systems whose fundamental vocabularies differ from its own, including systems that make incompatible or competing claims. Its defining requirement is coordinative: heterogeneous systems must become intelligible in relation to one another while retaining the distinctions through which their claims acquire meaning. This reveals a potential category error: the completeness of one model of reality may be mistaken for the completeness of reality’s possible modes of description.

A theory can expand its explanatory range by incorporating additional phenomena, mechanisms, or domains, and it can unify previously separate explanations under more fundamental principles. These are genuine forms of theoretical expansion. Yet neither operation by itself determines how fundamentally different descriptions of reality relate to one another. The issue becomes especially important when several theories are incorporated into a larger substantive framework. If they are translated into one privileged ontology and integrated into a broader account, the resulting framework may possess greater explanatory scope while remaining a substantive theory operating through a single conceptual regime. Its breadth does not by itself confer meta-systemic universality. Greater theoretical scope does not by itself constitute a change of level. Increasing what a theory explains and increasing its capacity to coordinate theories are therefore different operations.

Scientific pluralism provides an important background for this problem. John Dupré’s account of the disunity of science emphasizes the possibility of multiple partly incommensurable ways of conceptualizing the world while maintaining the unity of the world itself (Dupré 2024, 1043–1057). It shows that explanatory plurality cannot simply be dismissed as a temporary failure to discover one sufficiently comprehensive descriptive framework. A theory may possess broad explanatory scope, strong internal coherence, and substantial unification while remaining self-contained in its mode of organization. Its universality is defined through its own ontology, conceptual vocabulary, methodology, and criteria of explanation. This does not make the theory defective. It means that its explanatory comprehensiveness should not be confused with the capacity to coordinate fundamentally different frameworks. If comprehensive theories can be organized according to fundamentally different conceptual and ontological regimes, then universality itself may need to extend to the relation among those regimes. The problem moves from the internal completion of one theory toward the possibility of a framework whose universality operates at the level of theories, ontologies, and modes of description.

A Universal Theory seeks to provide a comprehensive account of reality through a determinate substantive framework. It establishes fundamental principles, entities, relations, processes, or explanatory mechanisms and organizes phenomena through them. A Universal Meta-System, by contrast, provides a common architecture within which different substantive frameworks can be situated and related. The distinction is therefore one of level and object: a Universal Theory organizes reality through a substantive framework; a Universal Meta-System organizes the relations among heterogeneous frameworks themselves. When several theories are incorporated into a broader substantive framework, their independent conceptual organization may be absorbed into one preferred ontology. In that case, the result remains a Universal Theory, however broad its explanatory scope. A meta-system emerges when the relations between theories themselves become part of the architecture of organization.

A Universal Meta-System must therefore provide more than a broad collection of theories. It must accommodate heterogeneous systems and other substantive configurations; distinguish their internal organizing principles and conceptual organizations; represent their concepts, claims, models, principles, relations, and broader frameworks within a common architecture; establish meaningful relations between them; preserve their internal identity within that architecture; represent significant differences, tensions, and incompatibilities; and allow systems and other configurations represented within the architecture to remain reconstructable in their own terms after being analyzed. These requirements distinguish meta-systemic coordination from eclectic synthesis, which combines selected elements from different systems into a new configuration. The meta-system instead establishes conditions of coordination across difference, at different possible scales of analysis. Accommodation does not mean accepting every system, claim, model, or principle as equally adequate, complete, or true. The architecture must be capable of representing agreement, partial overlap, different levels of analysis, different explanatory principles, and genuine contradiction. Several distinctions are therefore essential: relation is not reduction; comparison is not assimilation; coordination is not homogenization; translation does not entail equivalence. A framework that can accommodate another system, concept, or claim only by converting it into its own substantive vocabulary has achieved integration through assimilation rather than meta-systemic coordination.

The criteria developed in the previous essay provide the conditions for evaluating such an architecture (Shapoval 2026a). They comprise eight criteria organized into three groups: Non-Reduction, Capacity, and Contradiction-Capacity concern the relation of the meta-system to the content it maps; Minimality and Invariance concern the properties of its coordinate architecture; and Reflexivity, Reconstructability, and Extensional Openness concern its reflexive and extensional properties. These criteria specify the conditions required when universality operates across heterogeneous systems, descriptions, and modes of organization. A Universal Theory seeks comprehensive explanation through a substantive framework; a Universal Meta-System provides the architecture through which comprehensive frameworks themselves can be situated and related. The second does not replace the first. It introduces a different level of organization in which theories, ontologies, conceptual systems, and modes of description become objects of coordination. The ambition traditionally associated with a Theory of Everything can therefore be reformulated at this meta-level, giving rise to the concept of a Meta-Level Theory of Everything.

4. What Is a Meta-Level Theory of Everything?

A Universal Meta-System provides an architecture for relating different comprehensive descriptions of reality. The corresponding problem is whether the ambition traditionally associated with a Theory of Everything can itself be reformulated at this level. The issue is whether universality can operate at the level of theories and ontologies, rather than only within one substantive account of reality. This is the reason for introducing the expression Meta-Level Theory of Everything. The term is distinct from the existing expression Meta-Theory of Everything, used by Mir Faizal, Lawrence M. Krauss, Arshid Shabir, and Francesco Marino in their 2025 paper “Consequences of Undecidability in Physics on the Theory of Everything.” Their proposal concerns intrinsic limits on a wholly algorithmic Theory of Everything and develops a meta-theoretical conception involving non-algorithmic understanding (Faizal, Krauss, Shabir, and Marino 2025, 10–21). The present essay addresses a different problem: the relation among multiple comprehensive descriptions of reality that may differ in their fundamental ontological and explanatory frameworks. The distinction is substantive: “meta-level” identifies a shift in the object of universality, from the limits and foundations of a Theory of Everything to the coordination of comprehensive frameworks themselves.

A conventional Theory of Everything seeks universality concerning what reality is and how its fundamental phenomena behave. A Meta-Level Theory of Everything shifts the focus to different comprehensive accounts of reality and their relations to one another. The meta-level does not designate a realm outside reality. It designates a level of analysis at which theories, ontologies, conceptual schemes, models, and explanatory systems become objects of analysis in relation to one another. The object of universality therefore shifts from the totality described by one theory to the plurality of comprehensive configurations through which that totality is theorized and rendered intelligible. This object may include scientific theories, philosophical and ontological systems, mathematical and computational models, explanatory principles, conceptual schemes, modes of description, and relations among theoretical systems. These objects need not be ontologically equivalent. At the meta-level, their common feature is their role as organized configurations through which aspects of reality are represented, explained, interpreted, or otherwise rendered intelligible.

The distinction can therefore be expressed through explanatory scope and meta-systemic scope. Explanatory scope concerns the range of phenomena that one theory can account for. Meta-systemic scope concerns the range of heterogeneous theories, ontologies, conceptual systems, models, principles, and comprehensive descriptions that can be situated, related, and preserved within a common architecture. The latter is not simply an extension of the former in quantity; it changes the object to which universality applies. This also clarifies the relation among several levels of theoretical analysis. A theory explains or describes a domain through substantive concepts and principles. A meta-theory takes theories themselves as objects of analysis. A meta-framework provides an organizational basis within which multiple theories or conceptual systems can be situated. A meta-system provides an architecture in which heterogeneous systems can be related while preserving their internal organization. A Meta-Level Theory of Everything applies this meta-systemic conception of universality specifically to comprehensive accounts of reality.

The central definition can therefore be stated directly:

A Meta-Level Theory of Everything is a universal meta-systemic framework capable of situating, relating, and preserving heterogeneous descriptions, models, concepts, principles, and comprehensive frameworks through which reality is represented, explained, and rendered intelligible.

The three capacities expressed in this definition are essential. A Universal Meta-System must be capable of situating different systems, concepts, principles, and claims within a common analytical architecture; establishing meaningful relations among systems, concepts, principles, claims, models, and other represented elements without presupposing identity or reduction; and preserving the internal distinctions, principles, and ontological commitments through which each system retains its identity within the common architecture. These capacities distinguish meta-systemic universality from comprehensiveness achieved by translating every system into one privileged vocabulary.

Universality at this level does not imply equivalence. A Meta-Level Theory of Everything does not require all theories to be interchangeable, equally true, mutually compatible, or reducible to a common doctrine. Its claim is more specific: heterogeneity itself can become an object of universal coordination. A universal architecture must therefore be capable of representing both relations and limits of relation, including overlap, difference, and genuine contradiction. If universality is achieved by absorbing every system into one final doctrine, the problem identified in the previous section is not overcome. The resulting framework remains a substantive system whose universality consists in the expansion of its own ontology and explanatory scope. It may encompass other systems, but only by translating them into its own terms. Such an architecture therefore does not operate at the meta-level: it extends the universality of one framework rather than establishing universality across frameworks. A genuinely meta-level conception of universality must consequently remain capable of relating heterogeneous systems without absorbing them into a single substantive ontology.

5. Universality Without Substantive Monism

A Universal Meta-System accommodates multiple substantive ontologies without absorbing them into a single substantive foundation. If a framework achieves universality by translating every ontology into one privileged account and treating that account as the final foundation of the entire architecture, its universality remains substantive rather than meta-systemic. The terminology may change, but the underlying mode of universality remains the expansion of one ontology to encompass others. Such a framework can include multiple systems within its explanatory scope, yet it does so by subordinating their independent organization to one final account. Meta-systemic universality requires a different relation to plurality: substantive systems remain distinct objects of coordination, and no one of them becomes the exclusive ontological foundation of the architecture. A Universal Meta-System does not need to determine one final answer to every substantive ontological question. Its universality can consist in providing a common architecture through which different substantive answers can be situated, distinguished, and related. Physicalism, idealism, process ontology, substance ontology, dualism, monism, and other substantive positions may continue to make determinate claims about reality. The meta-system establishes conditions under which their differences can become intelligible in relation to one another without requiring one of them to become the exclusive foundation of all the others.

The central principle can be stated directly: universality without monism means that a universal meta-level architecture can accommodate multiple substantive ontological configurations while preserving their plurality. Meta-systemic unity consists in a common architecture of coordination; substantive systems remain distinct within it. Substantive unity means that different accounts ultimately converge upon one ontology, fundamental vocabulary, or explanatory foundation. Meta-systemic unity means that different substantive systems occupy a common architecture within which their relations, differences, and limits of relation become intelligible. A meta-system may identify correspondences, dependencies, overlaps, oppositions, or contradictions while preserving the distinct ontological commitments through which each system organizes its claims. Integration does not entail homogenization: a common analytical space can contain heterogeneous systems without requiring them to conform to one explanatory level or vocabulary. Coordination does not entail elimination of disagreement: genuinely incompatible claims must remain representable as incompatible. Translation does not entail equivalence: concepts may be related through functional correspondence, analogy, difference of level, dependence, or tension without becoming identical.

Multiple substantive systems may make genuine claims about one reality, with determinate scopes and potentially incompatible commitments. Their coexistence within a common architecture does not require either substantive monism or relativism. The meta-system provides the architecture within which their relations can be examined; it does not turn that architecture into a final substantive ontology. Scientific pluralism likewise does not by itself entail epistemic relativism or the suspension of judgment. Veigl’s analysis of the relation between scientific pluralism and epistemic relativism shows that this relation cannot be reduced to the claim that plurality eliminates the possibility of evaluation (Veigl 2021, 3485–3503). Plurality does not imply equal adequacy or relativism. A Universal Meta-System must be capable of accommodating systems with different scopes, assumptions, levels of analysis, explanatory capacities, and epistemic statuses. The fact that a system can be localized within the architecture does not constitute an endorsement of it. Accommodation is analytically prior to evaluation. A system must first be identified and situated accurately enough for its claims to be understood on their own terms before those claims can be compared or evaluated.

When a system is localized within a Universal Meta-System, its fundamental distinctions, principles, ontology, conceptual vocabulary, and internal relations must remain recoverable without negating its internal identity. If a system can be represented only by replacing its own concepts with those of the meta-system, it has been assimilated rather than localized. The preservation of internal identity is therefore a condition of genuine meta-systemic coordination and provides a methodological principle that is subsequently developed more precisely in Polymetaphysical Cartography. A Universal Meta-System seeks unity at the level of coordination while preserving plurality at the level of substantive description. Its universality lies in the range of heterogeneous systems, descriptions, and other substantive configurations that can occupy a common architecture; its unity lies in the relations established among them; and its discipline lies in preventing coordination from becoming substantive assimilation.

The criteria developed in the previous essay provide the safeguards for this arrangement. Non-Reduction, Capacity, and Contradiction-Capacity concern the relation of the meta-system to the content it maps; Minimality and Invariance concern its coordinate architecture; and Reflexivity, Reconstructability, and Extensional Openness concern its reflexive and extensional properties. In combination, these criteria prevent meta-systemic coordination from becoming substantive assimilation. Sensitivity to differences of level and scope is essential for distinguishing relations that operate under different conditions or at different levels of analysis, while relations across conceptual vocabularies must be established without converting the concepts involved into identity. These requirements are subsequently addressed in greater methodological detail through Polymetaphysical Cartography.

For a Meta-Level Theory of Everything, universality at the meta-level must accommodate multiple comprehensive accounts of reality and the heterogeneous descriptions through which they are articulated, without turning their plurality into either fragmentation or substantive monism. Unity and plurality occupy different levels of the architecture: unity of coordination at the meta-systemic level, plurality at the substantive level.

6. Truth Across Multiple Languages of Reality

Different comprehensive systems can remain distinct within a common architecture and still function as truth-bearing descriptions of one reality. Materialism, idealism, process philosophy, systems philosophy, and other comprehensive approaches to reality may identify different entities, relations, processes, structures, or principles as fundamental and organize explanation through different conceptual languages. Their differences therefore cannot be reduced to alternative terminologies for an identical theoretical object. Each framework establishes its own account of what is fundamental, derivative, explanatorily relevant, and intelligible. Relating their claims adequately requires identifying these internal commitments and determining how they correspond, diverge, overlap, or conflict across frameworks. The existence of such plurality does not by itself require abandoning realism. One reality can be approached through multiple conceptual organizations without any one organization constituting an exhaustive account of it. Sandra Mitchell’s integrative pluralism emphasizes the partiality and multiplicity of explanatory strategies, while Michela Massimi’s perspectival realism develops a form of realism in which scientific knowledge remains situated and refers to perspective-independent states of affairs (Mitchell 2023, 261–297; Massimi 2018, 342–359). Both approaches show that plurality of representation and realist commitment need not be mutually exclusive.

A system may disclose something genuinely true without possessing an exhaustive account of reality. More precisely, truth is not identical to exhaustiveness; validity is not identical to completeness; ontological insight is not identical to ontological totality; and genuine disclosure does not entail exclusive explanatory authority. A system can therefore be ontologically valid without being ontologically exhaustive. Ontological validity concerns the successful identification, articulation, or explanation of a genuine aspect, configuration, relation, level, or mode of reality. Exhaustiveness would require comprehensive explanatory authority across every ontologically relevant domain, level, relation, and alternative mode of description.

This distinction also clarifies how a claim can be genuinely true within a determinate scope or under determinate conditions. A claim may be genuinely true while its applicability remains bounded by a determinate domain, level, conceptual organization, condition, or mode of inquiry. “Limited” therefore concerns scope, not subjective or arbitrary validity. A physical description may disclose a genuine regularity under specified conditions; a psychological framework may disclose real features of experience; a metaphysical system may identify genuine ontological relations. Their truth does not by itself confer unlimited explanatory authority. The same distinction clarifies the role of conditions in description. A system may articulate a genuine configuration, aspect, level, or mode of reality while the applicability of that articulation remains conditioned by the domain, level, conceptual organization, or mode of inquiry through which it is established. What is conditioned is the articulation and scope of the claim, not reality’s existence. The meta-system can distinguish the reality disclosed by a system from the conditions under which that disclosure becomes intelligible.

Truth across multiple systems does not dissolve contradiction. If two propositions directly contradict one another under the same conditions and at the same level, they cannot both be declared true merely because they originate in different frameworks. Contradiction remains a genuine logical relation. A Universal Meta-System must therefore be able to represent contradiction without prematurely resolving it. At the same time, not every apparent contradiction arises under identical conditions. Different systems may address different domains or levels, and concepts that appear similar may perform different functions within their respective frameworks. Sensitivity to differences of level is therefore essential. Before incompatible claims can be evaluated, the meta-system must determine what each system is asserting, at what level, and under which conditions. The contradiction itself can then become an object of analysis: where it occurs, what claims generate it, and whether the conflict concerns substance, level, scope, conditions, or conceptual organization. Distinguishing differences of level therefore helps separate apparent contradiction from direct contradiction without dissolving either into the other.

Multiple substantive systems may make genuine claims with determinate scope that are potentially incompatible, while none thereby acquires automatic exhaustive authority. Their differences can be coordinated without reducing reality to any one of their conceptual languages. This extends the problem addressed by scientific pluralism and perspectival realism from the plurality of scientific representations to the relation among heterogeneous theoretical and ontological frameworks. The metaphor of languages of reality captures this relation. Different conceptual languages may foreground different entities, relations, processes, structures, or modes of intelligibility within one reality. Their plurality does not imply that reality is produced by language, nor that every language possesses equal authority. It means that different languages may reveal different aspects of one reality without reality being reducible to any one of those languages.

A universal architecture must preserve the conditions under which different truth-bearing systems become intelligible, representing their overlaps, functional correspondences, differences of level, and genuine contradictions. Its task is therefore to make both relations and limits of relation visible. Universality requires the capacity to determine not only where systems connect, but also where and why they remain distinct.

7. From Ontological Plurality to Polymetaphysical Cartography

Relating heterogeneous systems without reducing them to one another requires an operational method within the Universal Meta-System. Such a method must situate different systems within a common analytical space while preserving the internal organization through which they make their claims intelligible. The first requirement is to distinguish coexistence, comparison, and localization. Systems may coexist without being meaningfully comparable, and they may be compared superficially while their internal organizations remain unexamined or are silently reconstructed according to the vocabulary of the system performing the comparison. Localization determines where a system’s concepts, distinctions, assumptions, ontological commitments, levels, relations, and explanatory claims belong within a shared analytical architecture. Comparison can operate on the basis of sufficiently precise localizations.

The coordinates used for localization cannot simply reproduce the substantive ontology of one of the systems being mapped. If the architecture is derived from one particular metaphysical or theoretical framework and imposed upon others, it becomes a disguised host ontology. A meta-systemic coordinate architecture must be general enough to accommodate heterogeneous substantive configurations while remaining determinate enough to distinguish meaningful differences among them. Several methodological distinctions follow: comparison is not reduction; translation is not equivalence; localization is not assimilation; relation is not identification. Comparison establishes similarities and differences. Translation establishes intelligibility across conceptual vocabularies. Localization determines a position within a common architecture. Relation establishes a connection without requiring identity. These operations must remain distinct from stronger operations that would replace one system’s organization with that of another.

Translation can operate without conceptual equivalence. A concept from one system may be related to a concept from another through functional correspondence, partial analogy, difference, opposition, dependence, or cross-level relation. Such relations can make heterogeneous concepts mutually intelligible while preserving the differences that make translation necessary. This provides a methodological basis for establishing relations across conceptual vocabularies. The same principle governs localization. A mapped system must remain recognizable according to its own internal conceptual organization after being positioned within the common architecture. If localization changes the system into the vocabulary of the map, the map has ceased to function as a coordinative architecture and has become reductive. Internal identity is therefore a fundamental condition of localization.

The requirements of a Universal Meta-System become operational in transdisciplinary analysis, where heterogeneous philosophical, scientific, metaphysical, psychological, and other theoretical systems must be situated within a common analytical space without reducing them to one another. This requires a method capable of localizing such systems, preserving their internal organization, and establishing relations among them. Polymetaphysical Cartography provides this method. The term Polymetaphysical indicates the plurality of substantive metaphysical and ontological configurations; cartography emphasizes localization, relational positioning, comparative analysis, and reconstruction. The cartographic metaphor is methodological: the objective is to determine positions and relations within a shared analytical space while preserving the identity and organization of what is mapped. Polymetaphysical Cartography is not a synthesis of all philosophies, an eclectic combination of selected concepts, a ranking of worldviews, or a claim that all systems are equivalent. Its purpose is coordination through localization and reconstruction. It establishes where systems overlap, where they differ, how their concepts correspond or fail to correspond, at what levels their claims operate, and where internal or cross-system contradictions arise. This makes reconstruction essential. A successful map must preserve enough information to recover the internal logic of the mapped system. It need not reproduce every detail of an extensive philosophical or scientific system, but it must retain the relations necessary to understand its fundamental distinctions, concepts, ontological commitments, and explanatory claims. Reconstructability therefore provides a test of whether localization has remained faithful to the system being mapped. Cartography differs from simple classification. Classification can place systems into predefined categories, whereas cartography must preserve the relations through which systems organize themselves. Labels such as “materialist,” “idealist,” or “process-based” may provide orientation, but they do not by themselves reconstruct the internal relations among a system’s fundamental concepts. A universal cartography must connect localization with reconstruction.

The coordinate architecture must satisfy a corresponding requirement. Its dimensions must be general enough to operate across substantive ontologies while remaining determinate enough to support meaningful distinctions. They must provide common dimensions of analysis without becoming another substantive metaphysics. In Meta-Para-Ontology, this requirement is fulfilled by Register Ontology, whose essential function at this stage is to provide the coordinate architecture through which heterogeneous systems can be localized while preserving their substantive distinctions. The registers of Meta-Para-Ontology were identified through comparative and analytical work across existing philosophical, metaphysical, and disciplinary traditions before Polymetaphysical Cartography was formulated as an explicit method. In this earlier work, the comparative procedure that would later be articulated as Cartography was already operating implicitly: the registers emerged through the identification of recurring ontological boundaries, transitions, and configurations across heterogeneous systems. The subsequent formulation of Polymetaphysical Cartography made this procedure explicit as a methodological framework for the systematic localization and relation of such systems. The relation is therefore one of methodological continuity rather than simple succession: Register Ontology was conceptually established before Cartography was explicitly formulated, while Cartography later articulated the comparative operations through which the coordinate architecture of MPO could be systematically applied. Polymetaphysical Cartography operationalizes the methodological requirements of the Universal Meta-System for the localization, comparison, relation, translation, preservation, and reconstruction of heterogeneous systems. Non-Reduction requires localization without assimilation; Capacity concerns the accommodation of heterogeneous systems; Contradiction-Capacity keeps incompatible systems and claims representable; Minimality and Invariance govern the relation between the coordinate architecture and the heterogeneous content it maps; Reflexivity requires the architecture to examine its own operations and assumptions; Reconstructability keeps mapped systems recoverable in their own terms; and Extensional Openness allows the architecture to accommodate forms of description not yet represented (Shapoval 2026a). Sensitivity to differences of level and scope remains a methodological requirement, while relations across conceptual vocabularies must be established without converting the concepts involved into identity.

The relation between Cartography and the Universal Meta-System can be stated precisely: a Universal Meta-System without a method of localization remains an abstract coordination principle; Polymetaphysical Cartography provides the operational means by which meta-systemic universality becomes analytically usable. The Universal Meta-System establishes the architectural requirement that heterogeneous systems occupy a common analytical space without losing their identity. Cartography therefore makes localization, comparison, translation, relational positioning, preservation, and reconstruction available within a common analytical framework.

8. Meta-Para-Ontology as a Meta-Level Theory of Everything

The preceding sections have established the requirements for a Universal Meta-System and the method by which heterogeneous frameworks can be localized, related, translated, and reconstructed within it. The question is now whether a determinate framework can instantiate this architecture. Meta-Para-Ontology is proposed as such a framework. MPO integrates complementary components: Register Ontology, Functional Ontology, and Polymetaphysical Cartography. They provide the coordinate, formative, and methodological dimensions required by the meta-systemic architecture developed in this essay (Shapoval 2026b).

The first is Register Ontology, consisting of four fundamental registers:

Meta-Potentiality
Formative Causality
Manifestation
Meta-Actualization

These registers provide general ontological coordinates through which heterogeneous descriptions can be positioned and their relations analyzed. They are not simply four successive stages through which reality passes. Their function within Meta-Para-Ontology is to distinguish different ontological conditions, modes of organization, and relations between levels while providing common coordinates for systems whose substantive commitments may differ. Register Ontology is complemented by Functional Ontology, which addresses the formative dynamics of Manifestation through Recall, Differentiation, and Actualization, operating along the Time–Space–Evolution axes. Register Ontology provides the coordinate dimensions, while Functional Ontology specifies formative operations within manifestation. Together they provide Meta-Para-Ontology with both a coordinate architecture and an account of formative organization.

The methodological dimension is provided by Polymetaphysical Cartography. It makes the coordinate architecture operational through the localization, comparison, translation, relational positioning, and reconstruction of heterogeneous systems. The three components can be stated concisely:

Register Ontology provides universal ontological coordinates.
Functional Ontology describes formative dynamics within manifestation.
Polymetaphysical Cartography provides the operations through which heterogeneous systems are mapped and related.

Their integration gives concrete form to the distinction between systematic completeness and meta-systemic completeness established earlier. MPO does not seek completeness by making one substantive ontology exhaustive and interpreting alternative frameworks through it. Its proposed universality lies in the capacity to situate, relate, preserve, and reconstruct heterogeneous systems within a common architecture. This is the basis for understanding MPO as a Meta-Level Theory of Everything. Its universal ambition concerns comprehensive descriptions of reality themselves: the different theoretical, ontological, conceptual, and explanatory configurations through which reality can be understood. The designation follows from the level at which universality operates, not from an attempt to derive every phenomenon from one final set of substantive principles.

Meta-Para-Ontology can thus be presented as the concrete candidate identified by the argument: Register Ontology provides the universal ontological coordinates; Functional Ontology provides the formative organization within manifestation; and Polymetaphysical Cartography provides the methodological operations through which heterogeneous systems are localized, related, translated, and reconstructed. Through these complementary elements, MPO is articulated at the meta-systemic level through its own ontological architecture and methodological operations. Its underlying philosophical commitment remains that reality is not exhausted by any single descriptive or ontological framework, while different systems may make genuine claims with determinate scope without thereby acquiring exhaustive authority.

9. “Everything” at the Meta-Level

At the meta-level, “everything” refers to the plurality of comprehensive frameworks, together with the heterogeneous descriptions, models, concepts, principles, claims, and relations through which reality is described, explained, and organized. The issue is no longer simply how many phenomena a theory can explain, but what becomes the object of universality when the level of analysis changes. In its conventional scientific use, the expression Theory of Everything refers primarily to the ambition of formulating a sufficiently fundamental physical framework capable of unifying the basic constituents and interactions of physical reality. The Standard Model provides a highly successful description of fundamental particles and three of the four fundamental interactions, while gravity remains outside its framework (Navas et al. 2024). The term is used for proposed frameworks seeking a more comprehensive account of fundamental physical reality. At the meta-level considered here, the object of universality shifts from the phenomena unified by a physical theory to the comprehensive frameworks through which reality itself is described and explained.

The meta-level introduces a different object of analysis: not only the phenomena addressed by theories, but also the ways in which reality is conceptualized, modeled, explained, and organized as knowledge. These include scientific theories, mathematical and computational models, philosophical and metaphysical systems, psychological and experiential frameworks, and other organized modes of description. At this level, the plurality of comprehensive frameworks itself becomes an object of universality without being combined into one enlarged substantive theory. This requires distinguishing domains of reality from descriptions of reality. Domains are what theories and other systems attempt to describe, explain, interpret, or disclose; descriptions are the conceptual, formal, methodological, and ontological configurations through which those domains become intelligible. A substantive theory seeks universality across a domain of reality. A meta-systemic framework addresses the plurality of frameworks through which reality is approached. The distinction is between explaining phenomena and organizing the plurality of frameworks through which phenomena are explained. A substantive theory may extend its explanatory scope across additional entities, processes, relations, or levels; a meta-system addresses how different explanatory frameworks can themselves be situated, related, and reconstructed while preserving their distinctions.

This yields two dimensions of universality. Explanatory universality concerns how much of reality one theory can explain. Meta-systemic universality concerns the range of heterogeneous theories, ontologies, conceptual systems, and comprehensive descriptions that can be accommodated, localized, related, and reconstructed within a common architecture. These forms of universality operate at different levels. A physical Theory of Everything remains a substantive foundation for explanatory universality within fundamental physics. Within a Universal Meta-System, a physical ToE can occupy the position of a substantive component without losing its scientific identity or explanatory criteria. The relation between the two is one of levels and coordination.

At the meta-level, “everything” acquires a second dimension. It refers not only to the totality of phenomena addressed by a comprehensive theory, but also to the plurality of comprehensive theoretical, ontological, and conceptual configurations through which reality becomes intelligible. The universal object therefore includes the relations among the comprehensive frameworks through which reality is articulated. A conventional Theory of Everything seeks to explain everything within a comprehensive substantive framework; a Meta-Level Theory of Everything seeks to relate the comprehensive frameworks through which reality is explained, described, and understood. The physical Theory of Everything remains concerned with the fundamental constitution and behavior of physical reality, whereas the Meta-Level Theory of Everything addresses the architecture through which comprehensive accounts of reality can themselves be situated, related, and reconstructed. The shift is from the universality of one comprehensive explanation to the universality of the architecture through which comprehensive descriptions of reality can be related.

10. Conclusion: From Explaining Everything to Relating Everything

The argument began with the recognition that any account of “everything” already presupposes a conception of what can count as intelligible, explanatory, and theoretically relevant. If comprehensive accounts of reality can differ in their fundamental entities, principles, ontological commitments, explanatory methods, and conceptual languages, then the comprehensiveness of any one theory does not by itself establish universality across all possible frameworks. Explanatory comprehensiveness does not entail meta-systemic comprehensiveness. The limits of self-contained universality lead to the concept of a Universal Meta-System: a framework whose object includes the relations among heterogeneous comprehensive descriptions themselves. Such a framework must preserve plurality without collapsing into either substantive monism or relativism. Its universality lies in coordination; its unity lies at the meta-systemic level, while substantive differences remain visible and analyzable.

The philosophical basis of this conception is a realist commitment to a reality not exhausted by any single description, while Polymetaphysical Cartography provides the method for localizing, comparing, translating, relating, and reconstructing heterogeneous systems without assimilating them to the architecture through which they are analyzed. Meta-Para-Ontology is proposed as a concrete realization of this architecture. Its Register Ontology provides universal coordinates; its Functional Ontology describes formative dynamics through Recall, Differentiation, and Actualization along the Time–Space–Evolution axes; and its Polymetaphysical Cartography provides the corresponding methodological framework. These components articulate Meta-Para-Ontology at the meta-systemic level through its ontological architecture and methodological operations.

The resulting conception changes the sense in which a Theory of Everything can be called universal. Universality need not terminate with the expansion of one comprehensive explanation; it can also concern the organization and relations of the heterogeneous knowledge through which reality is comprehensively described, explained, and understood. A Meta-Level Theory of Everything extends the question of “everything” from the totality explained by a theory to the plurality of knowledge, concepts, principles, models, claims, and comprehensive frameworks through which reality is theorized and rendered intelligible. The physical Theory of Everything remains a substantive project within fundamental physics; the meta-level provides an architecture in which knowledge from different domains, at different levels and scales of organization, can be situated, related, and preserved without requiring it to remain confined to the boundaries of the systems from which it originates.

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