Physics is stuck. Here are 3 reasons why.
Modern physics seems to be in a rut. And in contrast to last time, when Lord Kelvin of Largs claimed in 1897 that “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now”, most physicists would argue that this time, in fact there is. It’s just that somehow we don’t know where to start and what to make of it. Even with some physicists arguing that the golden age of physics, where ground-breaking discoveries created the foundation for general relativity and quantum theory, was just an extraordinarily productive period in science, they will happily admit that we do not lack interesting new experiments or discoveries in modern days. In fact, just think about the Higgs particle or gravitational waves. So what is the reason we still lack clarity in the big picture of nature?
1. Missing paradigm
As Thomas Kuhn, himself a trained physicist, pointed out in his brilliant essay The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, all science is build upon some sort of paradigm. For example, when the phenomenon of electricity raised its first eyebrows in the scientific community, a lot of scientists (famously excluding Benjamin Franklin) thought of it as some kind of invisible fluid. Outdated as that may sound today, this paradigm actually gave birth to some important inventions, like the first…
