“Every time you see a beautiful woman, just remember, somebody got tired of her”
-Anonymous
I just finished reading “Some time with Feynman” by Leonard Mlodinow. Its not outstanding -if you expect a lot of time with Feynman- but thats not the point here. A part of it deals with the “friendship” between Gell-Mann and Feynman, who shared a corridor back than at Calltech.
Gell-Mann uses mathematical concepts to trace physics. You can tell from the few passages dedicated to him that his idea of pleasing physical theories are connected to a spotless mathematical background. I guess most of us share this feeling. At the time Gell-Mann was the mentor of a young guy named John Schwarz who worked on a crazy new idea called string theory. Little to nothing was speaking for that theory except for mathematical beauty. Arguably that has changed by now (not that I knew), but the evolution of string theory tells us that many of us are attracted by mathematical elegance , even if its the only argument (otherwise…why the hell wouldn’t it be refused in the beginning? ).
Feynman did refuse it. He is quoted by Mlodinow (not literally): ” The only thing this theory predicts are 10 dimensions. I can only see 4.” Feynman was special in the way that he couldn’t take much pleasure from ideas which depart from physical facts , whether they are (mathematical) beautiful or not. He even stated that it could be dangerous to treat physics with mathematical rigor , if the physical side lacks rigorous definitions from the start. That is, the physical in-put is not clear-cut (read the first chapter of Feynman Lectures on Gravitation). Maybe “beautiful” had another meaning to him and maybe thats an approach to successful physics.
Here is a great talk of Murray Gell-Mann at TED where he explains his concept of beauty. Its a very controversial point of view. Enjoy!
