By Ian R Thorpe
“That theory is worthless. It isn’t even wrong.”
So commented the Austrian physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli on a student paper that provoked this beautiful and brutal reminder that the value of a scientific theory lies in its capacity to be tested.
Some might say that religion, for example, is another theory that “isn’t even wrong”. Believers not only reject the necessity of evidence to support their faith in God, but give the impression that such evidence would reduce their ineffable god to something less than they would be willing to worship.
An echo of Pauli’s exasperation may resonate in the mind of any agnostic when a believer says something like: “I believe the universe was created by God. How do you explain its creation?”
Faced with such certainty a God-wobbler will usually be thrown off their stride and start waffling about the infinite possibilities of an infinite universe and how the process of scientific enquiry works by questioning everything and … and … and …erm …