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Perhaps we can let the Great Physicists resolve the disagreements here--saw this on woit's blog:
Guiding principles from the great physicists to take us beyond the standard model!
Perhaps if we focus on the common philosophy of the great physicists as to what physics is and ought be, expressed in their simple words reflecting infinite wisdom, we will be better prepared to advance physics beyond the standard model.
Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the
present, but an equation is something for eternity. -Albert Einstein
It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the
greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion. And
therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must
endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must
it be in seeking to understand these visions. Truth is ever to be
found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of
things. . . -Sir Isaac Newton
When the solution is simple, God is answering. -Einstein
The only real valuable thing is intuition. -Einstein
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself. -Einstein
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. -Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by
understanding. -Einstein
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess. -Newton
For an idea that does not at first seem insane, there is no hope. - Einstein
If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the
shoulders of giants. -Newton
In questions of science, the authority of thousands is not worth the
humble reasoning of one individual. -Galileo
Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But
thought and ideas (the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the
three spatial dimensions at c), not formulae, are the beginning of
every physical theory. --Einstein/Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
But before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the
whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed, which only
became common property among philosophers with the advent of Kepler
and Galileo. Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of
the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience
and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are
completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and
particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is
the father of modern physics--indeed, of modern science altogether.
-Einstein , Ideas and Opinions
.. my dear Kepler, what do you think of the foremost philosophers of
this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations,
they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at
the planets or Moon or my telescope. -Galileo
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die, and a new generation grows up with it. -Planck
Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It
forces us to change our thinking in order to find it. -Niels Bohr
...my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning
preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which,
either because of its being their own or because of their having
received it from some person who has their entire confidence,
impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it
out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea ...
gain their instant acceptance ... whatever is brought forward against
it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or
with hot rage ... Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not
be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their
adversaries.... No good can come of dealing with such people . . . their
company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous. -Galileo
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both
true and sufficient to explain their appearances. -Newton
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Einstein
A physical theory can be satisfactory only if its structures are
composed of elementary foundations. The theory of relativity is
ultimately as little satisfactory as, for example, classical
thermodynamics was before Boltzmann had interpreted the entropy as
probability. -Einstein
When two systems, of which we know the states by their respective
representatives, enter into temporary physical interaction due to
known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence
the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in
the same way as before, viz. by endowing each of them with a
representative of its own. I would not call that one but rather the
characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its
entire departure from classical lines of thought. By the interaction
the two representatives [the quantum states] have become entangled.
-Schrodinger
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we
grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium--we will all say to
each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been
so stupid? -Wheeler
Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find
harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. -Einstein
A people that were to honor falsehood, defamation, fraud, and murder
would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long. -Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in
the opposite direction. -Einstein
Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas
which mere human language is as yet unable to express. Let them make
the effort to express these ideas in appropriate words without the aid
of symbols, and if they succeed they will not only lay us laymen under
a lasting obligation, but, we venture to say, they will find
themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be
doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite
found their way out of the equations into their minds. -Maxwell
I don't believe in mathematics. -Einstein
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that
mine are greater. -Einstein
Geometry is not true, it is advantageous. -Poincare
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers. -Plato
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can
be counted counts. -Einstein
Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by
the nose. -Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is
the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is
a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. -Einstein
Before I enter upon a critique of mechanics as a foundation of
physics, something of a broadly general nature will first have to be
said concerning the points of view according to which it is possible
to criticize physical theories at all. The first point of view is
obvious: The theory must not contradict empirical facts. . . The
second point of view is not concerned with the relation to the
material of observation but with the premises of the theory itself,
with what may briefly but vaguely be characterized as the
"naturalness" or "logical simplicity" of the premises (of the basic
concepts and of the relations between these which are taken as a
basis). This point of view, an exact formulation of which meets with
great difficulties, has played an important role in the selection and
evaluation of theories since time immemorial. -Einstein
String Theory has been the leading candidate ... for a theory that
consistently unifies all the fundamental forces of nature, including
gravity. It gained popularity because it provides a theory that is UV
finite.(1) . . . The footnote (1) reads: "Although there is no
rigorous proof to all orders that the theory is UV finite..." -STRING
THEORY IN A NUTSHELL
We don't know what we are talking about . -Nobel Laureate David Gross
on string theory
It is anomalous to replace the four-dimensional continuum by a
five-dimensional one and then subsequently to tie up artificially one
of those five dimensions in order to account for the fact that it does
not manifest itself. -Einstein to Ehrenfest (Imagine doing this for
10-30+ dimensions!)
String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses . -
Feynman, Nobel Laureate
String theory is like a 50 year old woman wearing too much lipstick.
-Robert Laughlin, Nobel Laureate
Actually, I would not even be prepared to call string theory a
"theory" rather a "model" or not even that: just a hunch. After all, a
theory should come together with instructions on how to deal with it
to identify the things one wishes to describe, in our case the
elementary particles, and one should, at least in principle, be able
to formulate the rules for calculating the properties of these
particles, and how to make new predictions for them. Imagine that I
give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing,
and that the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon;
whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair? -'t Hooft, Nobel
Laureate
It is tragic, but now, we have the string theorists, thousands of
them, that also dream of explaining all the features of nature. They
just celebrated the 20th anniversary of superstring theory. So when
one person spends 30 years, it's a waste, but when thousands waste 20
years in modern day, they celebrate with champagne. I find that
curious. -Glashow, Nobel Laureate
I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that
they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that
disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation-a fix-up to
say, "Well, it might be true." For example, the theory requires ten
dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the
dimensions. Yes, that's all possible mathematically, but why not
seven? . . . So the fact that it might disagree with experience is
very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most
of the time. It doesn't look right. -Feynman
But superstring physicists have not yet shown that theory really
works. They cannot demonstrate that the standard theory is a logical
outcome of string theory. They cannot even be sure that their
formalism includes a description of such things as protons and
electrons. And they have not yet made even one teeny-tiny experimental
prediction. Worst of all, superstring theory does not follow as a
logical consequence of some appealing set of hypotheses about nature.
--Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow
The great irony of string theory, however, is that the theory itself
is not unified. . . For a theory that makes the claim of providing a
unifying framework for all physical laws, it is the supreme irony that
the theory itself appears so disunited!! Introduction to Superstrings
& M-Theory -Kaku
If Einstein were alive today, he would be horrified at this state of
affairs. He would upbraid the profession for allowing this mess to
develop and fly into a blind rage over the transformation of his
beautiful creations into ideologies and the resulting proliferation of
logical inconsistencies. Einstein was an artist and a scholar but
above all he was a revolutionary. His approach to physics might be
summarized as hypothesizing minimally. Never arguing with experiment,
demanding total logical consistency, and mistrusting unsubstantiated
beliefs. The unsubstantial belief of his day was ether, or more
precisely the naïve version of ether that preceded relativity. The
unsubstantiated belief of our day is relativity itself. It would be
perfectly in character for him to reexamine the facts, toss them over
in his mind, and conclude that his beloved principle of relativity was
not fundamental at all but emergent (emergent from MDT!) . . . It
would mean that the fabric of space-time was not simply the stage on
which life played out but an organizational phenomenon, and that there
might be something beyond. (MDT!) -A Different Universe, Laughlin,
Nobel Laureate
[String Theory] has no practical utility, however, other than to
sustain the myth of the ultimate theory. There is no experimental
evidence for the existence of strings in nature, nor does the special
mathematics of string theory enable known experimental behavior to be
calculated or predicted more easily. . . String theory is, in fact, a
textbook case of Deceitful Turkey, a beautiful set of ideas that will
always remain just barely out of reach. Far from a wonderful
technological hope for a greater tomorrow, it is instead the tragic
consequence of an obsolete belief system-in which emergence plays no
role and dark law does not exist. --A Different Universe, Laughlin
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the
easiest person to fool. ... You just have to be honest in a conventional
way after that. . . I would like to add something that's not essential
to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you
should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. . . I'm
talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying,
but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you
ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our
responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I
think to laymen. . . If you're representing yourself as a scientist,
then you should explain to the layman what you're doing--and if they
don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their
decision. -Nobel Laureate Feynman, Cargo Cult Science
To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or
distinction than that connected with advances in science. -Newton
Errors are not in the art but in the artificers. -Newton
I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin
not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations .
-Galileo
By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox . -Galileo
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand
things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of
them is not understanding . -Isaac Newton
Gradually the conviction gained recognition that all knowledge about
things is exclusively a working-over of the raw material furnished by
the senses. ... Galileo and Hume first upheld this principle with full
clarity and decisiveness . -Einstein
LET US EMBRACE THESE PHILOSOPHIES AS WE FORGE AHEAD!!!