A review by bmadisonw
Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray by Sabine Hossenfelder

challenging slow-paced

2.0

This book seems uncertain who its audience is. Rather than starting with an overview of particle physics as currently understood and theories in vogue, the author immediately jumps into proving her thesis of how the desire for beauty, simplicity, and symmetry in the mathematics that underlie supersymmetry, quantum theory, and multiverse assertions breed bad science. If you‘ve never been introduced to these theories, or to the standard model of physics and both general and special relativity, you‘ll be completely lost from the jump. Even if you have some cursory knowledge of these topics, you‘ll likely find it initially hard to follow.

Hossenfelder eventually explains the basics, but waits until halfway though the book, at which point most readers will have justifiably quit reading. Her premise is intriguing, if you can make it through the rambling self-doubt and meandering interviews she conducts with top physicists. For those who don‘t want to, here‘s the gist: why do physicists insist that the laws of physics must conform to human ideals of beautiful, symmetrical math? What makes them so nervous about really big and really small numbers, or anything much different than 1? Is science hitting a slippery slope where the internal consistency of a theory is more important than actually proving it with experimental evidence? When particle colliders continuously fail to produce results predicted by theories, at what point should physicists accept “just so,“ stop building, or invent a better theory? Just questions, no answers.