MU-4: Is Qualitative Understanding a Possibility?

Continuation of Parts 1, 2 and 3…

Ok, so we know about the dominance of maths. But has the maths now taken over completely? Are physicists increasingly “working on mathematics rather than physics”, asks Sabine Hossenfelder? Has the trust in maths crossed the Rubicon:
“Somewhere along the line many physicists have come to believe that it must be possible to formulate a theory without observational input, based on pure logic and some sense of aesthetics. They must believe their brains have a mystical connection to the universe and pure power of thought will tell them the laws of nature.”

Of course, many physicists warn against going overboard. Like Lee Smolin:
“The idea that the truth about nature can be wrestled from pure thought through mathematics is overdone…The idea that mathematics is prophetic and that mathematical structure and beauty is a clue to how nature ultimately works is just wrong.”
But why not just test the predictions of the maths against observed reality, you ask? Surely that would settle the issue. Ah, that’s the problem. The kinds of experiments to test modern theories are so expensive and elaborate that testing is not easy. Even worse, more and more of those theories imply the existence of multiverses (multiple universes!) which, by definition, cannot interact with our universe (if they did, they would just be part of our universe!).

Then there’s the concept of mathematical beauty that is repeatedly said about something called string theory that has never been verified and even worse, looks like can’t be proven anytime soon either:
“Superstrings produced some of the most complex and, to its supporters, beautiful mathematics ever devised.”
Yes, maths can be beautiful! But is mathematical beauty any indication of truth? Besides, doesn’t (mathematical) beauty lie in the eyes of the beholder anyway?

But even as the maths gets impossibly accurate and yet not give us any understanding about the underlying reality (whatever that means), that didn’t stop the odd physicist like Richard Feynman from coming up with ways of visualizing things because that acted as such a good aid whether or not they were true! How useful Feynman’s techniques were in the fog of that era is best expressed by James Bjorken:
“When Feynman diagrams arrived, it was the sun breaking through the clouds, complete with rainbow and pot of gold.”

So what’s the future of knowledge going to be? Even more maths, even more accuracy but very little understanding of what is going on?! Feynman hoped that things may change in the future:
“The next great era of awakening of human intellect may well produce a method of understanding the qualitative content of equations.”
Is that even possible? Sounds impossible today but then again, as a species, we’ve been wrong so many times before. I guess only time will tell…

To be continued…

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