A review by emsemsems
A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design by Frank Wilczek

4.0

‘Electrons are described by space-filling fields—their wave functions—which prefer to vary smoothly and gently. They settle into specific standing wave patterns, or “orbitals,” that find an optimal compromise between the attraction of nuclei and their natural wanderlust. I like to imagine electrons explaining themselves to nuclei this way:
“I find you attractive, but I need my space.”’

It is not as ‘meaty’ (in terms of the ‘science’/mathematical bits) as I would have liked/preferred, but it is surely a highly entertaining book; very engaging writing, for sure. Or as readers who prefer light-er reading of pop. science books would say, highly 'readable' (I cringe a little at the term, but it is so fitting). I’ve heard/read that his more recent publication, [b:Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality|53398908|Fundamentals Ten Keys to Reality|Frank Wilczek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1606104694l/53398908._SY75_.jpg|80085680] is quite ‘good’ too. And having read this, I don’t doubt the rave reviews.

‘—Salvador Dalí used dodecahedral symbolism to express a cosmic connection that might otherwise be hard to put on canvas. We’ve also found a dodecahedron lurking within every one of the infinite variety of buckminsterfullerenes, where its twelve pentagons serve as enablers, allowing the hexagons of graphene to close up into a surface—The dodecahedron is a thing of beauty, and by now it’s become a familiar friend.’

‘To me, Caravaggio’s rendering conveys two profound messages that go beyond the words of the gospel’s text—Those who believe without seeing are blessed with the joy of certainty. But it is a fragile certainty, and a hollow joy—Those whose faith is not passive, but engages reality, will receive a second, more fulfilling blessing in the harmony of belief and experience. Blessed are those who believe what they see.’

‘Supersymmetry was (and is) a beautiful mathematical theory. The problem with applying supersymmetry is that it is too good for this world. It predicts new particles—lots of them. We have not seen, so far, the particles it predicts. We do not see, for example, particles with the same charge and mass as electrons, yet are bosons instead of fermions.’

‘Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a strategy for having our supersymmetric cake and eating it too. If we are successful, we can apply beautiful (supersymmetric) equations to describe a less beautiful (asymmetric—or should we say subsupersymmetric?) reality. Specifically, when an electron steps into the quantum dimension, its mass will change—At the frontiers of ignorance, applications of spontaneous symmetry breaking involve creative guesswork. You must guess a symmetry that isn’t visible in the world, put it into your equations, and show that the world—or, more realistically, some aspect of the world you’re trying to explain—pops out of its stable solutions.’

‘In beauty we trust, when making our theories, but their “cash value” depends on other factors. Truth is highly desirable, but it is not the only, or even the most important, criterion. Newton’s mechanics (centred on conservation of mass) and his theory of colours (centred on conservation of spectral types), for example, are not strictly true, yet they are hugely valuable theories. Fertility—a theory’s ability to predict new phenomena, and give us power over Nature—is also a big part of the equation.

Trust in beauty has often, in the past, paid off. Newton’s theory of gravity was challenged by the orbit of Uranus, which did not obey its predictions. Urbain Le Verrier, and also John Couch Adams, trusting in the beauty of the theory, were led to propose the existence of a new planet, not yet observed, whose influence might be responsible. Their calculations told astronomers where to look, and led to the discovery of Neptune.

Maxwell’s great synthesis, as we’ve seen, predicted new colours of light, invisible to our eyes, but also not yet observed. Trusting in the beauty of the theory, Hertz both produced and observed radio waves. In more recent times, Paul Dirac predicted, through a strange and beautiful equation, the existence of antiparticles, which had not yet been observed, but soon thereafter were. The Core, anchored in symmetry, gave us colour gluons, W and Z particles, the Higgs particle, the charmed quark, and the particles of the third family all as predictions prior to their observation.

But there have been failures too. Plato’s theory of atoms and Kepler’s model of the Solar System were beautiful theories that, as descriptions of Nature, utterly failed. Another was Kelvin’s theory of atoms, which proposed that they are knots of activity in the ether. (Knots come in different forms, and they are not easily undone, so they have, it might seem, the right stuff to make atoms.)

Those “failures” were not without fruit: Plato’s theory inspired deeper study of geometry and symmetry, Kepler’s model inspired his great career in astronomy, and Kelvin’s model inspired Peter Tait to develop the theory of mathematical knots, which remains a vibrant subject today—but as theories of the physical world they are hopelessly wrong.’