Hmm, I don't think so. General relativity and quantum mechanics were acknowledged as fundamental (relative to previous theories) more or less immediately, becau

Hmm, I don't think so. General relativity and quantum mechanics were acknowledged as fundamental (relative to previous theories) more or less immediately, because they provided a coherent theoretical scheme that accounted for the observations which were problems for previous theories, and they also made many new predictions which were experimentally confirmed within a few years. The problem for theoretical physics now is that all experiments from the LHC and so on are consistent with the standard model. So there are no recalcitrant observations that can guide new theory formation. The regime where we might get new physics, where gravity and QM are both significant, is so far experimentally inaccessible, though see here for a nice talk by Carlo Rovelli on one such experiment that might be plausible in the coming years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgieRctZ4dE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgieRctZ4dE The problem with Wolfram/Gorrard's model is that it doesn't relate to any experiments. As far as I know the most that can be said for it is that Gorrard showed that in some limit the model is able to replicate some features of GR and QM, so that by definition doesn't go beyond the predictions of GR nor QM.