In the second century, Ptolemy’s Almagest let experts predict the movements of the stars for the first time, based on the belief that heavenly bodies, being heavenly, moved around the earth in perfect circles, or in circles within circles (epicycles). It wasn’t true, but it worked, and its followers made it work for over a thousand years. As new stars were found, the model was upgraded to explain them, which increased its complexity. This first standard model explained every star movement, until a new one was seen, and it only fell when Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton developed a causal model to replace it. Today there is a second standard model, and it is very like the first, as both are:
1. Descriptive. Both describe what is, but fail to predict what is new. They are based on observed patterns, ideally equations, but description is only the first step of science, not the last.
2. Parameterized. Ptolemy’s model let experts choose the free parameters of epicycle, eccentric, and equant to fit the facts, and today’s standard model lets experts choose the free parameters of field, bosons, and charge.
3. After the fact. Ptolemy’s model defined its epicycles after a new star was found, just as today’s standard model bolts on a new field after a new force is found.
4. Barren. Descriptive models only interpolate, so the Ptolemaic model would never have deduced Kepler’s laws, Likewise today’s standard model will never deduce that matter is made of extreme light.
5. Complex. Medieval astronomers tweaked Ptolemy’s model until it became absurdly complex, just as today, standard model equations fill pages and those of its string theory offspring fill books.
6. Normative. The Ptolemaic model was the norm of its day, so any critique of it was an attack on tradition. Likewise today, any standard model critique is seen as an attack on physics itself (Smolin,2006).
7. Wrong. Ptolemy’s model sometimes worked, even though planets don’t move in circles around the earth. Likewise our standard model sometimes works, even though virtual particles don’t exist.
When the medieval church pressured Galileo to recant, they didn’t ask him to deny that the earth went around the sun. They just asked him to call it a mathematical fiction not a reality description. Likewise today, quantum theory is called a mathematical fiction, but what if it describes reality, just as the earth really does go around the sun?
The research method of science has three steps: first it describes patterns, then it finds correlations, and finally it attributes causes (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1991). This suggests that the standard model is a descriptive model that didn’t evolve into a causal theory because physicists gave up on quantum theory. Instead, Everett fantasized about many worlds (Everett,1957) and Witten built a mathematical castle in the air called M-theory, neither of which led anywhere. The standard model, as a description based on equations that lead nowhere, is essentially a scientific dead end in the history of science, just as the last standard model was.