Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray

Sabine Hossenfelder

Jun 2018 · Sold by Basic Books

About this ebook

In this "provocative" book (New York Times), a contrarian physicist argues that her field's modern obsession with beauty has given us wonderful math but bad science.
Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades.
The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these "too good to not be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.

Ratings and reviews

Sabine has a great respect for reality that every scientist should. But a great mathematician has zero responsibility to tether their art to our universe. Physics gets great benefits from the application of maths to our universe. But many critics including Sabine and Smolin are regretting that we don't make progress modeling our universe if we get carried away holding fashion contests for mathematics. Sabine has a good reputation for caring about spaceship Earth and it's inhabitants. Looking for nuclear energy innovation. Reporting on the bleeding edge of observations such as solid state fusion aka "cold fusion". Because progress in science isn't denoted by "Eureka.. It's beautiful". More often " That's weird! Is that an error in an instrument, or is it a new reaction? Can we make it happen again? What's controlling this? How come it doesn't work like in the textbook? Could this explain crazy mineral layers? Explain dark matter, or Earth mag field? Can we trust the measurements?

About the author

Sabine Hossenfelder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, where she studies the phenomenology of quantum gravity. She has published more than fifty research articles on physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. She resides in Frankfurt, Germany.