The General Theory of Everything () 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".Krzysztof J. Kilian , "Sny o teoriach ostatecznych a problem przyszłości filozofii, ("Dreams about Ultimate Theories and the Problem of the Future of Philosophy") ΣΟΦΙΑ, no. 8, 2008
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 ChanceAn annotation to Filozofia przypadku. Tom 1 and Science Fiction and Futurology,"Fantastyka i futurologia", at Lem's official website as well as the pseudoscientific work of Polish scifi writer Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg, Jednolita teoria czasoprzestrzeni ["The Uniform Theory of the Spacetime"] (1990)Jan Czerniawski, "Świat według Snerga", Nowa Fantastyka, July 1991Lech 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
References