“PSEUDOREALITY PREVAILS”

Borrowing a phrase from Robert Musil’s huge and fascinating novel, theorists “without qualities” now dominate physics. If there is are reasons to believe that this will change any time soon, I do not see them.

All one can hope for is that nature will one day be kind enough to pull back the veil enough to reveal for all the mediocrity of the current paradigm and attempts to cover its blemishes with opaque mathematical makeup.

Actually this has already happened. Witness the embarrassing failures of string theory, supersymmetry, WIMPs, as well as the “nightmare scenario” that unfolded at the LHC. But humans, and theoreticians in particular, are very adept at denial and rationalization.

The pitiful Ptolemaic paradigm lasted for many centuries, but it was eventually brought down by nature and skilled natural philosophers. A revolution as wide-ranging and shocking is coming. It is inevitable. When it will come is known to no one.