Has elegance betrayed physics?
physicstoday.scitation.org
physicstoday.scitation.org
One of my favorite analogies is that it took humanity more than 1000 years to invent algebra. Now we teach it to schoolchildren.
The lesson is that no matter how proud we are of our progress in a field, the next problem might just be a stumper, and we have no idea how long it will take to solve.
Sometimes I like to bring up the lesson of algebra when talking with managers about project estimates. ;-)
An analogy would be psychology. The evolutionary path our brains took to develop to their current state is ... ugly. Why should things be different in physics?
Another possibility is that developing the next level of theory, and finding a way to simplify it mathematically, are two different steps.
As a human endeavor to have our brains predict things about the physical world, physics has to "run" on the human brain. In that sense, evolution shapes the physics that humans can conceive and understand. Evolution doesn't change what actually happens physically, so it doesn't affect physics that way.
Concepts, ideas, equations and models absolutely do change the world, in a very real and physical sense. They do not (probably) affect the fundamental laws of physics, though.
Another example are computers themselves. You can't build computers without computers, so they are already kind of building themselves, with us humans using as evolutionary slaves/hosts.
For an extreme example, see Wolfram's theory in New Kind of Science, a (controversial) hypothesis about how laws of physics evolve via cellular automata, simple programs producing complexity.
Even outside of this example, much of what we consider as "our universe" (macroscopically observable patterns and laws) evolved through micro-interactions. It was only last century that matter was discovered to be nothing special, just denser clumps of energy.
If you mean evolution in the strictest biological sense, i.e. a cat deciding to change the universal speed of light… unlikely. Though the connection between consciousness and physical world (objectivity, solipsism) is still a contentious and unsettled area.
The hard part is figuring it out.
Nitpicking a bit but I think it took the whole mankind life on earth to create algebra :-) That's hundreds of thousands of years (provided mankind even "starts" somewhere)
Minor spoiler alert.
Feynman had a strong dislike for string theory, even going so far as to shout at someone "I don't want to talk about string theory!" Presumably, Feynman could sense that this kind of "search for beauty" was against empiricism. I always found it interesting that even back then, when empirical observation seemed to rein supreme, there were those who eschewed it and searched for meaning beyond what nature presents to us.
And we're getting to a point where philosophers are reconsidering Poppler's Criterion? It's time to stop. Every day these people continue publishing about SUSY is a day Young Earth Creationists and Climate Change Deniers can notch down as evidence in their favor.
[0] I think it actually isn't widely known that Michaelson and Morley didn't publish their experiment as evidence against a static ether and instead claimed it validated the "ether dragging" hypothesis.
Yes, it's true, Maxwell's equations are simple and elegant and the Lagrangian of the standard model is, well, not. But that does not necessarily mean it's wrong! Nature's ugly sometimes...
* Certain conditions apply.
The problems are social. Financialisation means a lot of smart PhDs get hoovered up by Wall St to do (effectively useless) work as quants. At the same time, pressure in academia - also created ultimately by financialisation - has made genuinely original creative work an extremely risky career move.
So PhD advisors are far more likely to say "Don't do that" when a hot prospect says "I want to explore this unusual thing which i found from way back which no one else is looking at."
And the idea that a patent clerk without a formal academic affiliation could publish papers that transform physics has become ridiculous.
Conversely mainstream ideas of questionable value - like string theory - which should only ever have remained a fringe interest have become absolutely central, because they're a relatively easy way for ambitious PhDs aiming for tenure to produce plausible physics-like content.
Science was working pretty well around the turn of the century. Now there's sand in the gears, and the entire machine is in danger of seizing up.
Sure, we could come up with theories without suc data, but the search space is just too inconceivably big to explore. We need constraints to narrow it down... and to have a reason to think it might be true.
Empirical precedes theoretical.
If I wrote a book about theorists who just kept working on the same elegant ideas, Wilczeck would be a source of inspiration.
"Hossenfelder’s real target, when you strip away some unfortunate terminology, is not beauty but self-satisfaction, which encourages disengagement from reality. That attitude reaches its theoretical apex in the doctrine of “postempirical science,” which argues that social consensus, not experimental evidence, determines scientific validity. Here she quotes physicist George Ellis, rebuking physicists and philosophers who adopt that attitude: “There are physicists now saying we don’t have to test their ideas because they are such good ideas. They’re saying—implicitly or explicitly—that they want to weaken the requirement that theories have to be tested. To my mind that’s a step backward by a thousand years.”"
Much of 'science' now a days has started to veer down the path of pseudoscience, and the path there is paved with regression mapping and 'science' by consensus.
That's a modern viewpoint. Historically, experimental results preceded theory in physics. That was certainly true for classical physics. The early years of subatomic physics were trying to put some structure around experimental results. Somewhere around 40 years ago, though, things got stuck. Experimental results became much harder to get, as the reachable areas had been explored.
Theory not verified by experiment is useless. Science is prediction, not explanation. (Fred Hoyle, the physicist, wrote that, but he was writing an SF novel at the time.)
How does one simultaneously hold three professorships?