Not even wrong

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses, see Not even wrong (disambiguation).

"Not even wrong" is a description of an

unfalsifiable".[1]

Origin of the expression

The phrase is generally attributed to the

theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was known for his colorful objections to incorrect or careless thinking.[2][3]

Rudolf Peierls documents an instance in which "a friend showed Pauli the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong'."[4][5] This may also be quoted as "That is not only not right; it is not even wrong", or in Pauli's native German, "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!" Peierls remarks that quite a few apocryphal stories of this kind have been circulated, and mentions that he listed only the ones personally vouched for by him. He quotes another example when Pauli replied to Lev Landau, "What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not."[4]

In this model, a distinction is drawn between things that are simply wrong (e.g., due to an ordinary factual or logical error) and things that are so completely wrong that proving their errors was hopeless.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ Burkeman, Oliver (19 September 2005). "Not even wrong". The Guardian.
  2. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1106-40. Archived from the original
     on 10 August 2011.
  3. ISBN 978-0-691-16147-1
    .
  4. ^
    S2CID 62478251
    .
  5. doi:10.1063/1.2809934
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-335-23027-3
    . Pauli had three levels of insult for what he saw as bad science: 'Wrong!', 'Completely wrong!' and 'Not even wrong!' – the last meaning that the work couldn't even be shown to be wrong.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Wolfgang Pauli.
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