Re:Data hint at 'five God particles'
by jessriedel on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @12:34PM
(#1433174)
I do think your statement is the philosophical equivalent of 'we can't be sure the sun will rise tomorrow', except that it differs by degree. (The sun has risen thousands of times in my personal experience, and bazillions of times in the experience of humans, while only a handful of fundamental physics discoveries have been made.) In either case, it's a question of justifying the claim that "In situations of type A, X has always been true in the past. Therefore, in situations of type A in the future, X will be true".
Likewise your simple statement that "the current zoo of particles may well all be fundamental, with no 'simpler' theory underlying them." is analogous to "the sun will collapse into a black hole tomorrow". Again, just a difference of degree.
[I should stress here that the justification for empiricism is an age-old philosophical problem which isn't easy to understand, much less solve. However, I think that a proper understanding of the history of physics gives very convincing (though maybe not the-sun-will-rise convincing) evidence that simplicity and beauty will be found at the bottom of the particle zoo.]
I don't understand what the true statement
>If there really is to be a scientific breakthrough of the magnitude of a Newton, it seems likely (almost by definition) that it will be from an unexpected avenue of thought - seeing that the expected ones have been well researched and haven't been all that productive.
has to do with our current discussion.
Lastly, (basically) no career particle physicist think that any Nobel prizes will be awarded for a unifying theory in their lifetime. (See, for instance, http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2998). Perhaps, if we're lucky, there will be a somewhat simplifying theory (which gets a Nobel prize) but that certainly couldn't come from the dominant research avenue, string theory.
Likewise your simple statement that "the current zoo of particles may well all be fundamental, with no 'simpler' theory underlying them." is analogous to "the sun will collapse into a black hole tomorrow". Again, just a difference of degree.
[I should stress here that the justification for empiricism is an age-old philosophical problem which isn't easy to understand, much less solve. However, I think that a proper understanding of the history of physics gives very convincing (though maybe not the-sun-will-rise convincing) evidence that simplicity and beauty will be found at the bottom of the particle zoo.]
I don't understand what the true statement
>If there really is to be a scientific breakthrough of the magnitude of a Newton, it seems likely (almost by definition) that it will be from an unexpected avenue of thought - seeing that the expected ones have been well researched and haven't been all that productive.
has to do with our current discussion.
Lastly, (basically) no career particle physicist think that any Nobel prizes will be awarded for a unifying theory in their lifetime. (See, for instance, http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2998). Perhaps, if we're lucky, there will be a somewhat simplifying theory (which gets a Nobel prize) but that certainly couldn't come from the dominant research avenue, string theory.