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0 pointsgshubert1711y ago0 comments

The August 2014 issue of Scientific American had an article by Afshordi, Mann, and Pourhasan entitled "The Black Hole That Birthed the Big Bang" on a holographic theory of the universe.

The article [0] is paywalled, but the preview contains a note from a reader suggesting "the holographic principle shares the same problems of all Idealist notions: rather than relying on evidence, it puts the elegance of the model first as an argument in its favor."

I hope the Fermilab experiments provide some useful data.

[0] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-black-hole-tha...

0 comments

chton11y ago

That's definitely a valid criticism, and one that can be levelled to a lot of popular theories like string theory (where holographic theory originates from) and quantum loop gravity. It's a short-term problem though, since we're more and more capable of searching for the needed evidence.

xico11y ago

Yeah, formalizing thoughts into models, and then testing them to validate or invalidate them is sooo idealist. I wish scientists would only rely on common sense and holy books, trusting their guts to do the right thing.

marcosdumay11y ago

The alternative is first collecting empirical results that current theories do not explain, and only then work on a model for explaining them.

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