  If a cat, a cannonball, and an economics textbook are all dropped from the
same height, they fall to the ground with exactly the same acceleration under
the influence of gravity. This equality of gravitational accelerations of
different things is one of the most accurately tested laws of physics. That
law, however, tells us little about cats, cannonballs, or economics. This
lecture expands on this theme to address the question of what features of our
world are predicted by a fundamental ``theory of everything'' governing the
regularities exhibited universally by all physical systems. This may consist of
two parts: a dynamical law governing regularities in time (e.g superstring
theory) and a law of cosmological initial condition governing mostly
regularities in space (e.g. Hawking's no-boundary initial condition). The
lecture concludes that: (1) ``A theory of everything'' is not a theory of
everything in a quantum mechanical universe. (2) If the laws are short enough
to be discoverable then they are probably too short to predict everything. (3)
The regularities of human history, economics, biology, geology, etc are
consistent with the fundamental laws of physics but do not follow from them.
(Public lecture given at The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology:
Stephen Hawking 60th Birthday Symposium.)
