Why be Natural?

Naturalness, as a guiding principle for effective field theories (EFTs), requires that there be no sensitive correlations between phenomena at low- and high-energy scales. This essay considers four reasons to adopt this principle: (i) natural EFTs exhibit modest empirical success; (ii) unnatural EFT...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Foundations of physics 2019-09, Vol.49 (9), p.898-914
Main Author: Bain, Jonathan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Classical and Quantum Gravitation
Classical Mechanics
Fine-Tuning
Hierarchy
History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics
Naturalness
Philosophy of Science
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Quantum Physics
Relativity Theory
Statistical Physics and Dynamical Systems
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Naturalness, as a guiding principle for effective field theories (EFTs), requires that there be no sensitive correlations between phenomena at low- and high-energy scales. This essay considers four reasons to adopt this principle: (i) natural EFTs exhibit modest empirical success; (ii) unnatural EFTs are improbable; (iii) naturalness underwrites what Williams (Stud Hist Philos Mod Phys 51:82, 2015 ) calls a “central dogma” of EFTs; namely, that phenomena at widely separated scales should decouple; and (iv) naturalness underwrites a non-trivial notion of emergence. I argue that the first three are not compelling reasons, whereas the fourth is.
ISSN:0015-9018
1572-9516
DOI:10.1007/s10701-019-00249-z