TY - CHAP

T1 - Between logos and mythos

T2 - Narratives of "naturalness" in today's particle physics community

AU - Borrelli, Arianna

PY - 2015/5/12

Y1 - 2015/5/12

N2 - At the core of today's particle physics stands the Standard Model, a theory whose predictions have so far not been contradicted by any experimental result. Despite this success in the last decades high-energy physicists have been speculating about and looking for a "new physics" beyond the Standard Model, and a motivation for this search is the "naturalness problem". This problem is neither an experimental anomaly nor a mathematical incoherence, but rather a non-compelling argument which physicists describe as "aesthetic" or "philosophical". In fact, the naturalness problem is best understood as a hybrid narrative combining words, formulas, numbers and analogies. This narrative is in some respects like a myth: it can be formulated in different, non-equivalent ways, which physicists however perceive as telling the same story of instability and disharmony, and it represents a shared belief helping define the high-energy-physics community.

AB - At the core of today's particle physics stands the Standard Model, a theory whose predictions have so far not been contradicted by any experimental result. Despite this success in the last decades high-energy physicists have been speculating about and looking for a "new physics" beyond the Standard Model, and a motivation for this search is the "naturalness problem". This problem is neither an experimental anomaly nor a mathematical incoherence, but rather a non-compelling argument which physicists describe as "aesthetic" or "philosophical". In fact, the naturalness problem is best understood as a hybrid narrative combining words, formulas, numbers and analogies. This narrative is in some respects like a myth: it can be formulated in different, non-equivalent ways, which physicists however perceive as telling the same story of instability and disharmony, and it represents a shared belief helping define the high-energy-physics community.

KW - Media and communication studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84937115747&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1163/9789004184121_006

DO - 10.1163/9789004184121_006

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:84937115747

SN - 9789004182929

T3 - Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft Online

SP - 69

EP - 83

BT - Narrated Communities - Narrated Realities

A2 - Blume, Hermann

A2 - Leitgeb, Christoph

A2 - Rössner, Michael

PB - Brill Rodopi

ER -