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I have Einstein and Rosens book laying around somewhere.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: We have a model that fits closely. But we are continuing to find things that cause the model to have to be tweaked. (dark matter, dark energy, non-locality, hold on to your hats, there's more to come!)

So there comes a time when we have to decide "Can we continue tweaking the model? Or do we have to go back to the basic axioms?"

An example would be Puthoff's work on gravity being a result of quantum field effects, based on Sakharovs theories. (Covered in Physical Review, March, 1989, I can email it to anybody who wants it).
The net result would be gravity is a somewhat local phenomena, and it may be that there are not any sufficiently large structures in the universe that we can see that can prove or disprove it.

I have had a somewhat similar idea for a long time, based on gravity at least having an effect on the local density of the quantum "foam", but I don't have the math training or patience to perfect it.

And I agree Einsteins models have been largely verified. The problem is, for any given set of results, there are an infinite set of models that match. Doesn't mean they are all correct!

Like has been said, Einsteins work really gives us a geometry, not a causality. Tells us where and when. But not who, what, or why. Bells work covers these aspects more.

My personal feelings are that we can't tweak anymore. That we will discover something basic that shows we are seeing only a slice of what the universe is truly all about. And it will be so revolutionary, it will shake the foundations of existence and meaning and life itself.

They will tweak the models until something better comes along. Since there are an unlimited number of working solutions to Einsteins equations, and since the budget for getting ever-finer data is limited, they can milk this cow forever. The math is already beyond horrible, so most of us will have to stand on the sidelines noting if one or another physicist seems unusually animated for a moment.

My personal feelings are that we can't tweak anymore.

When it comes to the effects of general relativity on the scale of the entire universe, you may very well be right (that is indeed a controversial matter).

At the moment, GR is the best tool we have, though (not for lack of looking), so we continue to tweak.

My personal feelings are that we can't tweak anymore. That we will discover something basic that shows we are seeing only a slice of what the universe is truly all about. And it will be so revolutionary, it will shake the foundations of existence and meaning and life itself.

This thread died over the weekend, but I felt I needed to respond anyway.

I share your exitement about future advances in science, but I have to say that I disagree that the foundational theories of physics (quantum mechanics and general relativity in particular) are in any kind of real trouble. These theories have been spectacularly succesful in explaining a wide variety of phenomena and it is highly unlikely that they would ever be completely supplanted. Each operates in a specific 'realm' of phenomena and IN THAT REALM each is strong, useful, and in no danger of needing major changes. Even modifying GR to effectively replace the need for dark matter would only represent a slight modification to the theory in a realm that is really outside of what we have been able to apply it to in the past, so tweaking is perfectly acceptable.

The main problem right now, and this is where your hopes of major new ideas has a lot of merit, is in combining the two theories. Right now, we simply cannot explore experimentally the realm where quantum mechanics and general relativity both hold sway, so there is room for a lot of new ideas and thinking. But the thing to bear in mind is that even this will likely be viewed as an extension of the previous two theories.

Remember that just because Einstein suggested a different theory of reference frames in Special Relativity for use when speeds approached the speed of light, it doesn't mean that everyone stopped using Galileo's old theory for more everyday problems. The old theories of Newton and Galileo were never replaced, mearly extended, and that is the image you should probably hold in your mind for future scientific advances. We don't give up good ideas without a damn good reason.