“Lost in Math” identifies all the philosophical and psychological pitfalls that afflict the minds of ‘those seeking prestige in the eyes of their fellows’ rather than truth as an end in itself (my assessment). Sabine proposes (in appendix C) some “salve” to put on these psycho-sores to facilitate healing. Unfortunately, there is no balm to prevent a recurrence of those same maladies.
A true cure addresses the fundamental cause … which, in this case, is simply the inability of modern physics to generate about two dozen dimensionless numbers.
Apparently they’ve given up and decided that these numbers are ‘picked out of a hat‘ … randomly. And that therefore the explanation of their quantities is that all possible permutations are instantiated in a “multi-verse” (or the like), i.e. explanation on the cheap. The unstated here is the nagging thought that there is only one universe … as historically proposed …
“For the generation of all things, one principle is sufficient” - Leibniz
… meaning that existence is logically generated from nothing. The job of theorists would then be … to create an accurate “logic map” of the universe that explains everything as a ‘function of nothing’.
The problem with this idea is that there are now thousands of constraints imposed by experiments. Hence, theorists are squeezed between a rock and a hard place. Regardless of the difficulty, the “one possible universe” paradigm cannot be given up after only a few centuries of trial. Giving up in favor of a multi-verse requires, at minimum, a trial of at least another millennium to satisfy even modest philosophical-moral obligation.
The way out of this ‘logic box’ is the ruthless re-assessment of every assumption (even those considered most certain). Such re-assessments may even eliminate parameters along with some of their related numbers.
The best example of this is Copernicus’ redesign of the solar system. Here, the sun-centered model eliminated Ptolemaic epicycles that our present theoreticians would be laboring to explain, in terms of new forces, that make Mars decelerate and go in the opposite direction for awhile. A similar ‘sun-centering’ might just disappear the magic of “dark energy” or “dark matter” or any other presently, or presumably fictitious parameter and their attendant fictitious numbers.
I enjoyed reading this book (more than Sabine’s “Existential Physics”) and do recommend it to anyone interested in such esoteric issues.
E. Beaubien (author: “Ex Nihilo - The Logic of Existence”)
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Customer reviews
First of all, I'm a dentist and neither a physicist nor philosopher. That said, I've long had an interest in cosmology, particle physics, critical thinking (including biases and heuristics), and philosophy, and I've read numerous books by authors referenced by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder in "Lost in Math." Given my lay reader status, I'd estimate that I really understood about 25%, mostly grasped another 25%, vaguely had an idea of 25%, and had no clue what she was talking the last 25% of the book. :-) Also given my lay reader status, I make no judgements about her descriptions of the problems currently being studied, proposed, or tested in particle physics. From everything I've read until now, they seem pretty on-target though. Ok.......got all the disclaimers out of the way. :-)Dr. Hossenfelder's writing style is just delightful. She's self-deprecating and regularly acknowledges that she could be completely wrong. She has a wry, ironic, sardonic and insightful sense of humor, which literally made my laugh out loud. I have never read a book about particle physics that made me laugh so much, that my wife looked up from her chair and asked what was so funny. Since I believe she is German, and English is her second language (I might be wrong about that), I'm even more amazed at her literary skill. Despite being moderately fluent in German myself, I could never write an equivalent book about dentistry in German.I appreciated that Dr. Hossenfelder interviewed many physicists, who embraced many different viewpoints, most of which disagreed with her own ideas about problems in particle physics, both theoretical and experimental. There's no apparent attempt to cherry pick perspectives, theories, or beliefs.Her concluding chapter addresses head on the most common problems in human biases, cognitive dissonances, and heuristics. She then applies them directly to what she perceives as the biggest potential problems in physics today: the underlying and widespread beliefs that the concepts of naturalness, simplicity, and elegance - summarized as the aesthetics of theories - may be fundamentally flawed. That the self-reinforcing nature of humans and human communities, even in scientific groups that should be more aware of the very problem, is pushing physics into further examination of ideas that have yielded a depressing dearth of results in the last 30 years. She acknowledges the successes, while laying out the problems that are glossed over, extrapolated beyond reason, and says, "Hey, maybe these concepts need to be reexamined."I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend it highly, as long as the reader has at least some passing with physics, philosophy, scientific methodology, and critical thinking.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2022
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2022
Critique of philosophical, economic, and social problems in the physical sciences. A beautiful approach to her subject!
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018Top reviews from other countries
Adam Carlton
Clear, intelligent and non-patronising tour of the crisis in fundamental physics
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2018
Susan Stepney
This is a great book that will win Hossenfelder few friends in the subject
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2019
Kevin Davis
Bit of a curates egg of a book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2018
