The Pseudoscience of Fundamental Physics

Among today’s physicists, Stephen Hawking is arguably one of the better known. I sometimes ask friends and colleagues why he hasn’t yet been awarded a Nobel Prize? Most people are at loss to respond.

The answer is related to the three pillars which have been the hallmark of science since the early 17th century:

(i) development of theoretical models,

(ii) expression of these models with mathematics,

(iii) verification by observation. 

But today the third pillar is under threat, the principle of verification by observation. 

The Roots of Mathematics and Natural Laws. Materialism vs Theism

There is something mysterious about mathematics and how it is relevant in the natural sciences. Eugene Wigner in his paper "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences", which even has its own Wikipedia page, says that this is mysterious, it has no rational explanation, it is a miracle, and we don’t understand it. Despite this, mathematics was one of his main tools for the work he did to earn his Nobel prize for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles in 1963.