news

more

Physics needs an aesthetic revolution

Truth and the imperfect universe

4th October 2021
|

Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy at Dartmouth College and Templeton prize laureate.

1,332 words
Read time: approx. 7 mins

The beauty in the universe that physicists seek and see is an illusory consequence of our human mathematics. The world is asymmetric and imperfect: it's time for an aesthetic revolution in physics, writes Marcelo Gleiser.

What is beauty? The poet John Keats, in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, responded with his enigmatic ‘“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ Although there isn’t agreement among scholars about the poet’s intentions in writing these lines, in scientific circles they came to signify a general epigraph for a Platonic take on Nature: that beauty, understood as mathematical symmetry and proportion, is the pathway to the truth, that is, to our final unveiling of Nature’s deepest secrets. I am here to argue against this belief—for it is a belief—from bottom up.

Marcelo Gleiser
4th October 2021

Continue reading

Enjoy unlimited access to the world's leading thinkers.

Start by exploring our subscription options or joining our mailing list today.

Start Free Trial

Already a subscriber? Log in

Latest Releases

Morality and prejudice

The future of multiculturalism

Life doesn't have to be biological

Join the conversation

Bud Rapanault 20 October 2022

There is a word for the problem being described in this paragraph:

"Models are approximations that must necessarily neglect details to be useful. The map is not the territory. The subreptitious substitution is to believe that the models are nature and not approximations to it. As a result, the model builder tends to ignore annoying imperfections, such as asymmetries that may interfere with the grand plan."

MATHEMATICISM

Mathematicism is the quaint, atavistic belief that mathematics (math) describes, underlies, and determines the nature of physical reality. There is no scientific justification for that quaint belief. Unfortunately, mathematicism is the default operating paradigm in the theoretical physics of the modern scientific academy; mathematicism has made a complete mess of theoretical physics.