Simplicity: A theory with less parameters, equations, or components is more beautiful.symmetries are beautiful, what do they mean?īeauty is conceptualised in the book as comprising three things: When people say that $latex e^+1=0$ or the Standard Model and its SU(3) × SU(2) × U(1). I'll approach the book first by explaining what the author means by beauty, and what she thinks of the relationship between beauty and truth, then I'll followup with the link between beauty and how it can be problematic and then I'll add some comments. (many) Physicists, claims Hossenfelder, are lost in (the beauty of) math, and are inching closer to believing that beauty should be a criterion of validation of a theory, where before only experimental confirmation would serve that role. The book claims that this idea not only is wrong, but that the idea of beauty itself has not been dissected enough, people throw it around too easily, and furthermore that the belief that physics has to be beautiful can be, and in fact has been, bad for a few subfields of physics (cosmology, quantum theory, and string theory, to name some), by misleading physicists who instead of studying different theories, focus instead of what they think is beautiful, regardless of its correctnss. Books that aim to popularise physics among the public also tend to reflect this idea.

The common idea -common for the standards of this side of the internet - is that physics is beautiful, in particular the laws of physics have a beauty to them. Sabine Hossenfelder, theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies just published a book about the relation between beauty and physics.

Beauty sabine hossenfelder