The views of Club speakers are their own and their participation does not constitute or imply endorsement or recommendation by The Commonwealth Club. In this 'provocative' book (New York Times), a contrarian physicist argues that her fields modern obsession with beauty has given us wonderful math but bad science. Each year, we bring nearly 500 events on topics ranging across politics, culture, society and the economy to our members and the public, both in-person and via extensive online and on-air listenership and viewership. A contrarian argues that modern physicists obsession with beauty. The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. Buy a copy of Lost in Math : How Beauty Leads Physics Astray book by Sabine Hossenfelder.

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Hear why Hossenfelder is insisting, to the generation of theoreticians that preceded her, that progress will probably not be made until they conclude that physics isn’t math. It may also be encouraging the pursuit of untestable string theory and supersymmetry explanations beyond what is scientifically useful (but which is still mathematically intriguing). Hossenfelder argues that when this belief in beauty becomes too dogmatic, it conflicts with scientific objectivity, and so may be interfering with our ability to understand black holes or why relativity theory and quantum mechanics have issues with each other. Join us for a virtual discussion with Sabine Hossenfelder, live-streamed direct from Frankfurt, Germany, about her concern that theoretical physicists have failed to make any major breakthroughs for more than four decades because they are obsessed with the goal that an accurate theory must be beautiful-at least to mathematicians.

Sabine hossenfelder lost in math