Saturday, May 30, 2009

Murray Gell-Mann on beauty and truth in physics



I'm doing something called "Marta's Culture Club" this summer for high schoolers in our youth group.  I'm planning on reading some Kierkegaard, watching some Kristov Kieslowski and otherwise ripping stuff off of my time at L'Abri.  

I want to add this guy to the list.  The talk is fascinating.  He's a Nobel prize winner and is talking about particle physics.  His question is:  "Are elegant equations more likely to be right than inelegant ones?"

I like it because in his talk he describes how physicists are able to recognize truth in equations based on other equations - like whether they fit into the pattern.  Elegance in equations is displayed by their relative simplicity.  It's also funny because at the very end Gell-Mann says something like, "some people want to complicate things by attributing these patterns to the supernatural.  That is just not the case."  Sorry, Dr. Gell-Mann, but I will be misusing your data sometime this summer to support the existence of God's patterns in the universe.  

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