Unlike Martin, I don’t actually think the problem facing the Theory of Everything is that certain aspects are difficult to describe or explain, I think it’s that the programme-makers – on showing so far – take for granted that non-specialists will find the SAME things tricky to grasp that were obstacles in the actual history of maths and science. For example, they made a ridiculously tremendous meal of how counter-intuitive Quantum Mechanics is, so weird that EVEN EINSTEIN refused to accept it: but when they invented a dramatised visualisation of how it was “stranger than any science fiction”, well, it just wasn’t. Either it was like quite routine science fiction (things can sometimes pass through other things zzzz) or it was like ordinary life (sometimes things you are sure will happen don’t). In the Quantum Caf’, when you ask for Orange Juice, you sometimes get something else entirely DUH-DUH-DAAH!! Er, hello, have you ever been in a non-quantum caf’, Brian?
Yes the Quantum World is possibly counter-intuitive IF you’ve internalised other previous theories: but this is just what non-scientists HAVEN’T done. For example, the idea that the rules of very big objects and very small objects might be extremely different isn’t hard to grasp at all – since we were all smaller once than we now are (and the rules WERE different) it’s kind of built-in. They should waste less time ooh-ing and aah-ing over things which are only shocking if you’ve spent a lot of time training yourself to be shocked.