Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years

I strongly disagree that the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years.<p>We have been looking <i>really</i> hard for answers to persistent questions. While we have not found affirmative answers, physicists have systematically ruled out option after option after option. We have not yet discovered a unified-theory-of-everything, but we know a whole lot more about what that theory is <i>not</i>.<p>Furthermore, the past 40 years have seen the emergence of precision cosmology (and the dark-matter&#x2F;energy paradigm that it entails), the observation and confirmation of neutrino oscillation, the detection of gravitational waves (and the nuclear physics revolution that has begun with GW170817), SN1987A, and so much more.<p>The coming decades are poised to learn so much more, a lot of it from the stars. GAIA, LISA, updated terrestrial GW detectors, LSST&#x2F;Rubin, TMT, SKA, and more are all poised to tell us much more about things we don&#x27;t understand. Particle physics will move forward too, though it is uncertain how quickly. The right breakthrough in wakefield accelerators, though, could be transformative.<p>Thirty spokes share the wheel&#x27;s hub;<p>It is the center hole that makes it useful.<p>Shape clay into a vessel;<p>It is the space within that makes it useful.<p>Cut doors and windows for a room;<p>It is the holes which make it useful.<p>Therefore profit comes from what is there;<p>Usefulness from what is not there.<p>Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 11

Does anyone else feel like the abstractions and models in physics have gone passed the point where the casual outsider (even a technically and scientifically minded one) can no longer intuitively understand it?<p>Because that&#x27;s how I feel. There are so many things I just don&#x27;t understand now like:<p>1. I originally thought the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle was a natural consequence of using particles (photos) for measurement. Instead however it seems to be a fundamental property of the universe, which I only learned after finding out most of the mass of hadrons comes from the relativistic motion of quarks and it explains why hadrons don&#x27;t collapse to a point.<p>2. What does it even mean to create more space? The universe is expanding. Ok, I can accept that. But what does it <i>mean</i>?<p>3. I find the models for dark matter and dark energy to be... <i>unsatisfying</i>. I realize there&#x27;s experimental evidence for unobservable mass but it <i>feels</i> like a fudge.<p>4. Of course we still have no quantum model for gravity.<p>5. I don&#x27;t really understand what a fundamental force really is. Like why does electromagnetism have a repulsive opposite but gravity doesn&#x27;t? When I tried to look into this I ended up down some rabbit hole of &quot;gauge forces&quot; and got completely lost. Why is the Higgs Field not a force?<p>6. Why are some predictions of the Standard Model so incredibly accurate (like the magnetic moment of an electron IIRC?) while others are so incredibly inaccurate (eg IIRC the QFT prediction of vacuum energy is off by 120 orders of magnitude).<p>7. Why are there exactly three generations of particles (ignoring the Higgs)? What does a generation even mean?<p>I could go on. I don&#x27;t for a second mean to suggest any of these notions are wrong. It&#x27;s just that the models have gotten so complex (it seems?) that it just feels like something huge is missing, something that will eventually seem obvious in hindsight. Or am I just a lemur trying to figure out how an airplane works?

Personally I find it amusing Hossenfelder is now invoking the need for learning philosophy of science, given how hostile she&#x27;s been to it before. See for instance<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;backreaction.blogspot.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;the-unbearable-lightness-of-philosophy.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;backreaction.blogspot.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;the-unbearable-ligh...</a><p>that begins with: &quot;Philosophy isn’t useful for practicing physicists. On that, I am with Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who have expressed similar opinions.&quot;<p>Though to be fair, she clarifies that she wishes philosophy wasn&#x27;t so useless, and that:<p>&quot;Philosophers in that area are necessarily ahead of scientists. But they also never get the credit for actually answering a question, because for that they’ll first have to hand it over to scientists. Like a psychologist, thus, the philosopher of physics succeeds by eventually making themselves superfluous. It seems a thankless job. There’s a reason I preferred studying physics instead.<p>Many of the “bad philosophers” are those who aren’t quick enough to notice that a question they are thinking about has been taken over by scientists. That this failure to notice can evidently persist, in some cases, for decades is another institutionalized problem that originates in the lack of communication between both fields.&quot;<p>This is the sort of reasoning that got me reading Hossenfelder in the first place, not the conspiratorial posts she writes now... :(

Short version, without the anger and bitterness:<p>Theoretical physicists&#x27; way of working is to put forward baseless mathematical models and build $40bn machines to prove them wrong. They should instead work on theoretical inconsistencies that have been known for a while.

And academia is failing too, I can’t remember what Nobel prize mentioned that he could not get one today as most researchers are stuck in having to produce papers for the sake of keeping their grants. What would be needed is a lot of free time and freedom to think ...

Good essay. Yes, the sociology and politics of the way we do science is overtaking the reproducible learning aspect. Foundations for many things, like physics, are as solid as necessary for doing a lot of work, but by the time you get to the point where you should be testing, rearranging, and ferreting out flaws in the foundations, you&#x27;re so indoctrinated into a culture that you don&#x27;t have the mental tools necessary to do the required work. So instead you just chug along the way the last generation did, adding a decimal point here or there.<p>It&#x27;s not wrong. It&#x27;s just not changing over time. It is stagnant.<p>The nice thing about physics is that with new advances in astronomy and the lack of a unified theory, it keeps getting poked with reminders that there may be missing pieces. That&#x27;s not true in many other fields.

As science historian John Horgan noted in <i>The End of Science</i> the parallel in physics is with academic humanities departments becoming mired in &quot;irony&quot;<p>The End of (one type of) Physics, and the Rise of the Machines<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.columbia.edu&#x2F;~woit&#x2F;wordpress&#x2F;?p=10680" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.columbia.edu&#x2F;~woit&#x2F;wordpress&#x2F;?p=10680</a><p>Seems there are two possible outcomes. The deluge of data leads to better correlation which smooths over the flaws in current models. And corrects errors with some minor fudge factor that contains no further significance.<p>From Dark Matter to Galaxies with Convolutional Networks<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1902.05965" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arxiv.org&#x2F;abs&#x2F;1902.05965</a><p>Or something deeply profound is discovered. The thing which cannot be ignored. And instead leads to an explosion of new physics. Recognizing patterns of the latter class will perhaps always be the domain of the human operator.

The role of this &quot;era&quot; may be in reformulating quantum physics and, separately, general relativity in new ways that make the ideas more accessible to more people, and earlier in their lives. The goal could be to make of modern physics... the <i>new</i> classical physics. That is, we start to let go the crutches we still teach because it is thought that day-to-day life is more readily explained by Newtonian physics. We are now in era where most advances (e.g. smartphones among them) could not exist in their present form without modern physics.<p>Once more people accept the concepts of modern physics as a way of life (perhaps intuitively?), we will be in fertile territory for any potential new revolution in physics.

Because the sophons have been sabotaging our experimental results

I think that the article raises some interesting points, with some that I agree with and some that I do not.<p>I think it would have been helpful for the article to put the 40 years of no progress in perspective. Are we looking for progress on the scale of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and so should we be comparing to the timescales between Newton and Einstein&#x2F;Schrodinger? How should we think about the rate of progression in a ‘mature’ field such as physics? Should it be linear (big discovery every 40 years), faster (new discoveries are faster due to bootstrapping from other discoveries), or slower (diminishing returns)?

What actually is the foundation of physics? The observations or the theories?<p>We believe, as an assumption (or nearly as a matter of orthodoxy) that there are simple universal laws that govern consistent natural phenomena. One could argue that that is the foundation of our science of physics in that if that wrong, the whole thing falls down. But that has not “progressed” and really should not change... which seems consistent with the concept of a building foundation. Building foundations don’t move and shouldn’t move.<p>What about theories, which seem to be the focus of her blog post? Well we should be careful to distinguish between our theories and the fundamental laws we think they describe—the map vs the territory and all that. I would really hesitate to call our theories a foundation of physics. For one thing they are known to be provisional; intended to be changeable. That’s not how foundations usually work.<p>When observations contradict theories, the theories must move. From that perspective one could say that observations are more foundational than theories. Once a piece of evidence is properly observed, it doesn’t change.<p>And the thing is, we have collected major (I would argue foundational) observations in the last 40 years. We observed the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, and I would call both of those foundational.<p>That they agreed with existing theory is somehow being taken for a crisis? I guess it’s a crisis if your job is to come up with new theories and you’re lacking reasons to do so.<p>But there are plenty of mysterious observations yet to be explained. Many of the observations related to dark matter and dark energy fit within a retrospective 40-year time horizon. Call them astronomy if you like, but going back up to my second paragraph, we believe they should be explainable by our physical theories.

I dare say the author is right on many points but statements like:<p>&quot;But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do.&quot;<p>make it hard for me to share her point of view, especially as these ideas are not mentioned.

I have become a bit more pessimistic about it the state of discovery. Things have slowed despite the current generation having abundant access to overwhelming compute power and the internet, things that did not exist even 30 years ago. There has never been a better time to collaborate or prove out theoretical models, yet there has been a decrease in needle moving discoveries.

I&#x27;ve read several of Sabine&#x27;s blogs over several months. I think she has very good ends in mind, has courage to push back on corporate&#x2F;academic inertia ... such inertia comes with any human organization ... On the negative side she&#x27;s big on complaining but small on alternatives. She&#x27;s also a bit too blunt&#x2F;dismissive of people -- this from a person who also dislikes corporate happy talk. As such it&#x27;s not clear if she&#x27;d confer distinction if she had a large budget, an institution, and group of experimentalists. An Oppenheimer? No.

&quot;...mindless production of mathematical fiction...&quot;<p>This derisive comment betrays the authors own hypocritical stance, claiming physicists are too close-minded, while simultaneously ridiculing the role of advanced mathematics in formulating new physics hypotheses, arbitrarily declaring them mindless fiction.

First, I disagree that physics, and its foundations, have not changed. Incrementalism is common in mature areas of study, but the cumulative effect is still felt.<p>Second, I am reminded of Thomas Kuhn&#x27;s <i>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</i> [0] This work described exact the state, with historical examples of the cycles, whereby progress exhibits peaks and valleys, periods of time wherein little monumental progress is made followed by brief frantic periods of discoveries, often stemming from the fertile ground laid by those who worked in plodding toil.<p>And so I am more inclines to believe we are in such a trough at the moment and not even a particularly deep one. Various avenues of thought &amp; experiment show amble potential to thrust us forward into one of Khun&#x27;s Scientific Revolutions.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-Anniversary&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0226458121&#x2F;ref=sr_1_1?crid=519N2NFV2IAG&amp;keywords=structure+of+scientific+revolutions+kuhn&amp;qid=1578957587&amp;sprefix=structure+of+sci%2Caps%2C149&amp;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th...</a>

Consider a Venn diagram. 3 circles : the observable, the understandable, the communicable. Intersecting at a chubby triangle. That&#x27;s physics. And it&#x27;s pretty darn small compared to the rest of the diagram.<p>Maybe the triangle is exhausted. All mapped out. The limits of the method have been met. Time to find a new method.<p>Maybe?

Do we really want something fundamentally important as the foundations of physics to progress or change quickly?<p>History of science and the philosophy of science has shown that the foundations of sciences progress a little here and a little there until these &quot;little progresses&quot; gain enough momentum to create a paradigm shift. And we only recognize these &quot;little progresses&quot; in hindsight after the paradigm shift.<p>Technological advances also tend to progress science. We tend to believe that advances in science lead to advances in technology but historically, it&#x27;s the other way around.<p>More likely than not, there are man &quot;little progresses&quot; being made toward an eventual paradigm shift, but until it happens, we won&#x27;t recognize how important those &quot;little progresses&quot; are.

I really really want a reason to not dismiss this as vapid demagoguery running on the &quot;Woman scientist challenges predominantly male establishment on stagnant paradigms&quot; ticket because this is absolutely what it reads like.<p>&quot;But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do. &quot;<p>This is one heavy claim (two actually), is there some place where she elaborates what that idea is in terms more specific than &quot;resolving inconsistencies&quot; and &quot;more theorists&quot; ?

Woit response:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.columbia.edu&#x2F;~woit&#x2F;wordpress&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.math.columbia.edu&#x2F;~woit&#x2F;wordpress&#x2F;</a>

Unpopular opinion:<p>The last time we had progression in the foundation of physics we just got even more powerful world destroying nuclear weapons. Maybe it&#x27;s just too dangerous to advance physics outside of deeply classified government programs. In order to keep new physics from destroying the earth, funding is diverted to make work projects for physicists working in cosmology and string theory that will never actually have practical significance.

Sabine has a great YouTube channel, too =&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;peppermint78&#x2F;videos" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;user&#x2F;peppermint78&#x2F;videos</a>.<p>On the topic of the LHC, particle physics, and future colliders, I like this video =&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Go2TaEUQpF4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Go2TaEUQpF4</a>.

Sometimes when I’m working on a coding or troubleshooting problem I get stuck iterating on an issue when really I need to step back and try to think about solving things a different way. My impression is this is what she’s trying to advocate the physics community to do. I think her overall tone is too negative and is turning a lot of people off but overall I think she is a needed voice just to make sure we’re on the right track.

Doesn&#x27;t it seem likely that there are important natural phenomena of complexity that simply exceed human ability to comprehend them no matter how long we work to understand them and no matter what evidence we stumble upon? That that evidence will always remain mysterious until we first develop artificial intelligence (for example) capable of interpreting it?

Actually, string theory arose as a way of doing exactly what this person requests. It was noticed that quantum field theory and gravity do not go together, so it was attempted to do something about this. So, it did not really work out? Well, you know the thing with this kind science is that it is unknowable beforehand what you are or are not going to find.

Indeed, theoretical physics has long ago stopped providing foundational explanations. It became strictly what essentially it had always been - a calculational tool. Whether calculations possess explanatory power is a question of psychology and sociology.

Sometimes the impossible takes us a little longer.<p>US school teacher, then geologist J. Harlan Bretz spent as much time as he could &#x27;out in the field&#x27;. It was as a result of -extensive- observations that he arrived at his &#x27;outrageous&#x27; Missoula Floods hypothesis. He spent 40 years defending his interpretation; he remained &#x27;out in the field&#x27; most of that time.<p>His critics had spent -very- little time in the field. They <i>knew</i> he was wrong. In 1979, he was awarded Geology&#x27;s top prize.

It stagnated when they started doing NHST, ie checking for a difference from &quot;background&quot; vs collecting and comparing data to the predictions of various theories to distinguish between them. Same thing that has destroyed every field of research that adopted this approach.

“They do not think about which hypotheses are promising because their education has not taught them to do so.”<p>Pretty rich coming from someone who’s written a bunch of papers on doubly-special relativity and similarly unpromising hypotheses.

I do not agree that physics has not progressed. I do however believe there may be some dogmatic contamination in some processes that may have stalled some progression. Gravity for example, big G or little g and why?

recent stuff on dark energy:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21974117" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21974117</a><p>(by the blog&#x27;s author Sabine Hossenfelder) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;oqgKXQM8FpU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;oqgKXQM8FpU</a><p>(more on the confidence tldr Λ&gt;1 still) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;7UNLgPIiWAg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;7UNLgPIiWAg</a>

This is my pet topic, but:<p>How can we expect to make progress in our theories if we haven’t even agreed on a consistent interpretation of today’s quantum theory?

In the spirit of pointing out inconsistencies...I am not a physicist, but something I&#x27;ve been confused about lately is why the action constant has a unit of seconds baked into it.<p>Feels like E = hf is an experiment with a hard coded 1 second measure time.<p>Why not express the relationship in terms of power?<p>P=uf where u is the action constant without the seconds unit hard coded. And E=utf has a variable time parameter

Maybe the actual foundations of physics are sufficient for explaining our everyday life on earth.

Perhaps we need some new mathematics, not new physics

I don’t get it. What does she want people to do?

Particle physics != foundations of physics.

Physics has made a lot of progress in social justice and representation and these kinds of comments putting down &quot;her point of view&quot; is the type of toxic masculinity that will send us back 100 years.

There will be no real progress before everyone agrees to unfuck everything Einstein fucked up.

Two reasons: Either scientists and academics have stopped exploring (true to a degree..) or they have been looking in the wrong places with the wrong mindsets and incomplete reasoning. (mostly this.); That said science has evolved a lot yes. But it could have evolved a thousand fold more if it wasn&#x27;t for that second reason;

&gt;But all shortcomings of these theories – the lacking quantization of gravity, dark matter, the quantum measurement problem, and more – have been known for more than 80 years. And they are as unsolved today as they were then.<p>Would solving these shortcomings make life better for anyone?<p>Other than the now famous physicist that came up with the solution, wouldn&#x27;t the others working on these problems become unemployed?

Thinking about dark energy and the renewed controversy about it, e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.space.com&#x2F;dark-energy-not-debunked.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.space.com&#x2F;dark-energy-not-debunked.html</a>.<p>We have grave inconsistencies in cosmology, yet very bold conclusions are made, assuming that our theoretical understanding of gravity and general relativity is 100% correct at all scales.<p>The claim about accelerated expansion, only 30 years old, is an example of the enormous arrogance of modern science, knowing that such theories have been developed and debunked every few decennia in the past 100-200 years.<p>The historical perspective seems to fail completely, and todays physicists seem to be so confident even though their colleagues of only a few generations ago have been proven wrong many times. Why would anything be different now, because we throw so much money at it, because we have wonderful computers, have we become so much more intelligent as a species?