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The Illusion of Equality: Why Physics Must Escape the Cage of 17th-Century Equations

Yassin Tanan

Published Jun 24, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

For over three centuries, theoretical physics has been dominated by an undisputed linguistic dogma: the idea that the ultimate expression of natural truth is an equation. From Newton’s mechanics to Einstein’s relativity, the equals sign has been the supreme judge of every theory. But today, faced with the unresolved mysteries of quantum complexity, entropy, and the structure of the vacuum, we must ask a radical question: what if our greatest obstacle isthe mathematics of equations itself?

DOI
10.5281/zenodo.20834687

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For over three centuries, theoretical physics has been dominated by an undisputed linguistic dogma: the idea that the ultimate expression of natural truth is an equation. From Newton’s mechanics to Einstein’s relativity, the equals sign has been the supreme judge of every theory. But today, faced with the unresolved mysteries of quantum complexity, entropy, and the structure of the vacuum, we must ask a radical question: what if our greatest obstacle isthe mathematics of equations itself?
‘God’, said Albert Einstein, ‘does not play dice’. This famous remark by the author of the theory of relativity was not intended as an analysis of the recreational habits of a supreme being but expressed his reaction to the new scientific ideas, developed in the first quarter of the twentieth century, which are now known as quantum physics. Before we can fully appreciate why one of the greatest scientists of modern times should have been led to make such a comment, we must first try to understand the context of scientific and philosophical thought that had become established by the end of the nineteenth century and what it was about the ‘new physics’ that presented such a radical challenge to this consensus. What is often thought of as the modern scientific age began in the sixteenth century, when Nicholas Copernicus proposed that the motion of the stars and planets should be described on the assumption that it is the sun, rather than the earth, which is the centre of the solar system. The opposition, not to say persecution, that this idea encountered from the establishment of that time is well known, but this was unable to prevent a revolution in thinking whose influence has continued to the present day. From that time on, the accepted test of scientific truth has increasingly been observation and experiment rather than religious or philosophical dogma.
‘God’, said Albert Einstein, ‘does not play dice’. This famous remark by the author of the theory of relativity was not intended as an analysis of the recreational habits of a supreme being but expressed his reaction to the new scientific ideas, developed in the first quarter of the twentieth century, which are now known as quantum physics. Before we can fully appreciate why one of the greatest scientists of modern times should have been led to make such a comment, we must first try to understand the context of scientific and philosophical thought that had become established by the end of the nineteenth century and what it was about the ‘new physics’ that presented such a radical challenge to this consensus. What is often thought of as the modern scientific age began in the sixteenth century, when Nicholas Copernicus proposed that the motion of the stars and planets should be described on the assumption that it is the sun, rather than the earth, which is the centre of the solar system. The opposition, not to say persecution, that this idea encountered from much of the establishment of that time is well known, but this was unable to prevent a revolution in thinking whose influence has continued to the present day. From that time on, the accepted test of scientific truth has increasingly been observation and experiment rather than religious or philosophical dogma.
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Physics, to most people, is a completely commonsense, logical and rational subject. Self-confidence in everyday life depends absolutely on the senses, so there is no use asking us to give them up unless there is an absolutely overwhelming need to do so. The new physics has revealed such a magnificently absurd structure to the world about us, that our commonsense mind and its senses cannot possibly appreciate it as a simple, visual, tactile, mechanical picture. The old, or Newtonian, physics believed the universe to be one of predictable, commonsense certainty. Heavenly bodies moved with a magnificent and ponderous evenness; the behaviour of large objects and things seemed to be perfectly understood. All science consists of making models, to see then what fits into the model and what fails to do so.
In the early seventeenth century Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed--from Kepler to Newton to Einstein. But in the early twentieth century when quantum physics, with its deeply complex mathematics, entered into the picture, something began to change. Many physicists began looking to the equations first and physical reality second. As we investigate realms further and further from what we can see and what we can test, we must look to elegant, aesthetically pleasing equations to develop our conception of what reality is. As a result, much of theoretical physics today is something more akin to the philosophy of Plato than the science to which the physicists are heirs. In The Dream Universe, Lindley asks what is science when it becomes completely untethered from measurable phenomena?