Sabine Hossenfileder’s book is an incisive, deep, and thought-provoking analysis

The 20th century was dominated by some astonishing and groundbreaking work in the field of physics. This groundbreaking work radically changed our perception of reality both at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. The Standard Model, a culmination of decades of hard work by pioneering theoretical and experimental physicists, remains our present best bet on the fundamental structure and building blocks of matter. However, it fails to account for and explain many phenomena, primarily gravity, dark matter, and dark energy. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, one of its prime architects, calls it ugly. Driven by the ambition to overcome the shortcomings of the standard model and the ambition to unify all interactions, modern theoretical physicists have come up with a lot of theories. These theories are based on the concepts of beauty, simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and naturalness (p.107). Yet, despite all these efforts, modern physics has yet to make groundbreaking discoveries in the last four decades. This obsession with beauty, according to Sabine’s understanding, is a simple reason why there has not been a major breakthrough in physics in the last four decades, and our overemphasis on beauty contrasts with the well-accepted belief of science being objective, hence the book “Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.”
The book, published in the year 2018, is spread over 200 pages and is divided into 10 chapters. It is the first major book on the subject since Lee Smolin’s book “The Trouble with Physics,” published in the year 2006. This book is an engaging popular account of the present situation in fundamental physics. It is also a strong critique of the situation. The book sheds light on her travels, conducting extensive interviews with some of the modern giants of theoretical physics like Steve Weinberg, T. Hooft, Nima Arkani-Hamed, etc., on modern theories like supersymmetry and concepts like beauty, elegance, and symmetry. Honestly and with full disclosure, Sabine describes in the first person her grappling frustration with the dilemma that her profession, theoretical physics, appears to be determinedly at the wrong end, at an impasse, a dead end going nowhere. It is a book written in contrast to what theoretical physicist turned philosopher of science Dawid Richard and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek tried to defend in their respective hard-hitting books.
The book makes a case for scientific theories to be driven by data and not beautiful math (p.22). For Sabine, math is just a tool and not a guide. The book traces the history of beauty going back to the times of Kepler and makes a case for it not always being a good guide in developing theories (p.24). In her understanding, physicists must first and foremost learn from failed predictions that they have not. She seems interested in maths only to the extent it could teach us something about the real world. For Sabine, our belief in beauty may be an experience-based one, but it is not a scientific criterion (p.65).
The book revolves around the argument that some theoretical physicists and philosophers have lost track of where physics ends and philosophy begins. In her view, this is potentially damaging and can have serious implications for the progress of modern physics. As such, she calls for a renewed dialogue between physicists and philosophers and reminds us that physics is not math; it is about choosing the right math. For Sabine, most of the problems in the foundations of physics are philosophical itches, not tensions with data, and we need philosophy to get to the bottom of our discomfort. We need philosophers to bridge the gap between pre-scientific confusion and scientific argumentation. This also means when science progresses, when our knowledge expands, the room for philosophy also shrinks (p.192).
The book has been well-received, with Science magazine calling it “provocative.” Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek recommended it as an “intensely personal and intellectually hard-edged” book, though he disagreed with it on many points. While the book does offer some insights, it falls short on many grounds. Sabine’s impatience with the lack of experimental evidence or negative results at LHC to support these theories being the first one. The second is the mathematical consistency of string theory, which she hardly talks about. The book, in short, is enormously informative and well-written and is highly recommended for students of physics.
Sabine Hossenfileder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, where she works on physics beyond the standard model, Phenomenological quantum gravity, and modification of general relativity. Having earned her Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in theoretical particle physics, she is a well-known physicist, science communicator, musician, and YouTuber.
Nasir Rather is a student of Physics. He can be reached at [email protected]

Nasir Rather