Between logos and mythos: Narratives of "naturalness" in today's particle physics community
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
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Narrated Communities - Narrated Realities: Narration as Cognitive Processing and Cultural Practice. ed. / Hermann Blume; Christoph Leitgeb; Michael Rössner. Brill Rodopi, 2015. p. 69-83 (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft Online; Vol. 183).
Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
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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 -