The Reasonable Ineffectiveness of Aesthetics in Particle Physics

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the reliance on aesthetic criteria like simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and inevitability in particle physics, arguing they often mislead scientific progress due to their subjective and transient nature.

Contribution

It provides a systematic critique of aesthetic criteria in particle physics, highlighting their limitations and the risks they pose to scientific objectivity and progress.

Findings

Aesthetic criteria have repeatedly misled particle physics.

Simplicity as a criterion lacks a stable, metatheoretical foundation.

Particle physics is more vulnerable to aesthetic biases than other sciences.

Abstract

In recent years, criticism of the methodology of particle physics beyond the Standard Model has increased, diagnosing too much reliance on aesthetic criteria for theory development and evaluation. Faced with several decades of experimental confirmation of all theories lacking, we subject four aesthetic criteria - simplicity, symmetry, elegance, and inevitability -, regularly mentioned in theory evaluation, to critical examination. We find that these criteria, all of which can be reduced to a desire for simplicity, have repeatedly misled modern particle physics. This is largely due to the lack of metatheoretical permanence of a uniform conception of simplicity. The reductionist claim of particle physics - the search for simple fundamental principles in a complex world - will be worked out as the reason why this discipline is particularly susceptible to the aesthetic appeal of simplicity. Thus, compared to disciplines dealing with complex phenomena, aesthetic criteria are much more frequently applied, exposing particle physics to the risk of missteps and dead ends.