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For falsification, too, is a form of scientific progress - albeit of a much less triumphant sort - that sometimes paves the way for deeper and more accurate theories.Įnter Paul Steinhardt, the Albert Einstein Professor and Director of the Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University. Pauli’s meaning, it seems reasonable to conclude, is that the young physicist’s work was not only incorrect, it couldn’t even be coherently expressed in such a way as to be clearly and explicitly falsified. Perhaps the most notorious physics put-down is attributed to Wolfgang Pauli, who was said to have summarily rejected the work of a young physicist that was put before him by archly declaring, It is not even wrong.

Not all such dismissive remarks were specifically geared towards quantum mechanics, however. Erwin Schrödinger became so uncomfortable with the implications of his celebrated equation that he even came up with a notorious thought experiment involving a half-dead and half-alive cat to demonstrate the palpable absurdity of a standard interpretation of the theory, while plaintively summing up his view on quantum theory later on in his life with a pithy, I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it. Of course, the development of quantum mechanics was known to wreak considerable intellectual havoc among even its most significant contributors, such as Einstein. Physicists are pretty good at coming up with memorable phrases to express their scientific disdain.Įinstein famously decreed, God does not play dice with the universe, as his justification for denying the inherently statistical nature of the world that quantum mechanics seemed to present. From: Inflated Expectations: A Cosmological Tale