LANDSCAPE PHILOSOPHY

It has been recognized in many articles by now that the string
landscape poses a serious threat to the future of physics, and
ultimately to all scientific endeavor. In a way, the quest for a
rational, ultimate description of all of nature is about being given
up - are those scientists promoting the landscape aware of what
they are doing? We don't think so - in dealing with questions of
that magnitude, the physicists leave their turf and wander into
realms of metaphysics that they are not trained to ponder upon.

Fortunately, there is professional help. The Germans, in their
innate fundamental skepticism, lead the way out - this becomes
evident in an recent article in the influential "Zeit" magazine about the landscape.
Among what is written there is the statement (freely translated):
"German physicists play no role in the discussion of the landscape,
rather the discussion is done at a philosophical level..." and then,
consequently, a philosopher is interviewed. He confirms what we have
been suspecting, namely that the landscape theory is no science!

This teaches us that physicists should more often consult with the
philosophers, rather than wandering astray with their speculations;
the latter have been more competent, essentially since Plato's
times, to meaningfully address questions of this depth. And the
physicists should also realize that the philosophers can actually
say much more also about down-to-earth particle physics, especially
about things physicists take for granted but which are, in fact,
ontologically and epistemologically on shaky grounds. Again, the
Germans lead the way here - in a truly foresighted manner,
in the best tradition of the country, the German Physical Society (DPG) will stage a huge meeting on the Philosophy of Physics,
including lots of talks on quantum gravity.
It speaks in favor of the character of the organizers not
having bowed under the outside pressure, by not having allowed talks
on strings and landscape, but rather having put emphasis on alternative
theories such as loop quantum gravity.

And they even go on further: almost revolutionary are some of the
treatises of the workgroup "Philosophy of Physics". Especially
stunning is the contribution "Does a Higgs mechanism exist?"
The author investigates the argumentative
structure of the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the
context of gauge theories. He finds that upon closer critical
analysis, the Higgs mechanism is just a rewriting of the degrees
of freedom and as such cannot posses any interpretable instantiation
in Nature. The philosophical results suggest that neither an
ontological, nor an epistemological interpretation of the Higgs
mechanism is tenable!

This quite clearly shows what goes all wrong when physicists do not
pay attention to the proper underpinnings of what they call
theories...had they been asking the philosophers 20 years earlier,
20 years worth of senseless work of thousands of researchers on the Higgs mechanism
would not have been wasted! Fortunately, from now on the situation
seems to be better, in that philosophers are finally invited to
Particle Physics conferences, at least in Germany. The APS would
be well advised to follow the lead and get those guys also over to
the US, in order to prevent even more philosophically misguided
resarch in particle physics, quantum gravity and above all, string
theory.