Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
Categories: Science & Math
Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder argues that many physicists have come to rely on mathematical beauty, naturalness and elegance when choosing theories, rather than on evidence. Through interviews with leading researchers, she examines why decades of work on theories such as supersymmetry have not produced confirmed results. Hossenfelder warns that this belief in beauty is leading physics astray, and calls for scientists to recognise their biases and return to testable ideas.
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- Shane Parrish: “This is really a book about how our belief in beauty has become a pursuit in and of itself crowding out scientific observation. Sabine Hossenfelder argues this is why we haven’t seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than 40 years.”