Not Even Wrong (book)
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"Not even wrong" is a phrase used to describe
pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable cl ...
or bad
science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
. It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses
faulty reasoning A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian '' De Sophisti ...
or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically.
Peter Woit Peter Woit (; born September 11, 1957) is a Latvian-American mathematician who works in twistor theory. He works in the mathematics department at Columbia University. Woit, a critic of string theory, has published a book ''Not Even Wrong'' (2006 ...
uses the phrase "not even wrong" to mean "
unfalsifiable Falsifiability (or refutability) is a deductive standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses, introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book '' The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). A theory or hypothesi ...
".


Origin of the expression

The phrase is generally attributed to the
theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experi ...
Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli ( ; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the ...
, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or careless thinking.
Rudolf Peierls Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, (; ; 5 June 1907 – 19 September 1995) was a German-born British physicist who played a major role in Tube Alloys, Britain's nuclear weapon programme, as well as the subsequent Manhattan Project, the combined Allied ...
documents an instance in which "a friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong'." This may also be quoted as "That is not only not right; it is not even wrong", or in Pauli's native German, "" Peierls remarks that quite a few apocryphal stories of this kind have been circulated, and mentions that he listed only the ones personally vouched for by him. He quotes another example when Pauli replied to
Lev Landau Lev Davidovich Landau (; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. He was considered as one of the last scientists who were universally well-versed and ma ...
, "What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."


See also

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References


External links

* {{cite web , author1=Peter Woit , author1-link=Peter Woit , title=20 Years of Not Even Wrong , url=https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13864 , website=Not Even Wrong - Columbia Math Department , access-date=25 August 2024 , date=20 March 2024 English phrases Philosophy of science Scientific terminology Pejorative terms