"Not even wrong" is a phrase often 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 falsifiability, unfa ...
or bad science.
It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be
scientific
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
but uses
faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and
scientifically.
[
For a meaningful discussion on whether a certain statement is true or false, the statement must satisfy the criterion of ]falsifiability
Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses that was introduced by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' (1934). He proposed it as the cornerstone of a sol ...
, the inherent possibility for the statement to be tested and found false. In this sense, the phrase "not even wrong" is synonymous with "unfalsifiable".[
]
History 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 experimen ...
Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics fo ...
, 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'."German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
, "" 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 also quotes another example when Pauli replied to Lev Landau
Lev Davidovich Landau (russian: Лев Дави́дович Ланда́у; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet- Azerbaijani physicist of Jewish descent who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics.
His a ...
, "What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."Peter Woit
Peter Woit (; born September 11, 1957) is an American theoretical physicist. He is a senior lecturer in the Mathematics department at Columbia University. Woit, a critic of string theory, has published a book ''Not Even Wrong'' (2006) and writ ...
used the phrase in the title of his book ''Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search For Unity in Physical Law''. Woit also writes a blog of that nam
See also
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References
External links
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English phrases
Philosophy of science
Scientific terminology
Pejorative terms
{{science-philo-stub