![]() And in these 40 years, there has not been a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics. In these 40 years, society spent billions of dollars on experiments that found no evidence to support the beautiful ideas. In these 40 years, aesthetic arguments have flourished into research programmes – such as supersymmetry, the multiverse and grand unification – that now occupy thousands of scientists. This has been going on for about 40 years. And whenever an experiment comes back empty-handed, physicists can amend their theories to accommodate the null results. ![]() But most of their beautiful ideas are hard or impossible to test. ![]() ![]() Physicists believe that their motivations don’t matter because hypotheses, after all, must be tested. In the foundations of physics, it has become accepted practice to prefer hypotheses that are aesthetically pleasing. Who doesn’t like a pretty idea? Physicists certainly do. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |