〈 Berger | Dillon 〉

The title of Sabine's piece is NOT "Why Physics has made no Progress in 50 Years", despite what you see here. Physics is making plenty of progress! She's talking about "fundamental" physics. Why is this progressing so much slower than condensed matter physics? (2/n)

Surprise: the main reason is that condensed matter physics is easier. In "fundamental" physics we're trying to understand the laws of just one universe. Most of the easy things have been done. In condensed matter you can make up new materials and study those. (3/n)

I disagree with the easy/hard classification. I think it is a biased view. There is a hierarchy of scales in physics. HEP and CM occupy different levels there. Because of emergent phenomena moving up and down that hierarchy is not always straightforward, to say the least.

I think the hierarchy is not as gray as you are purposing. i.e. it's fair to say that the kinetic theory of gases talks a bout more 'fundamental' aspects, and statistical mech connects the bridge I don't see how the magnetoresistance example relates being 'fundamental '

just because something is useful and affects our everyday life doesn't mean that it's more fundamental

Maybe it's linguistics, I am just questioning "fundamental" being firmly pinned to the study of the most elementary constituents of matter known to date. Surely, it is important, but quarks and gluons will not help me solve problems about topological spin current, will they?

If you don't like "fundamental" being used as the technical term for whatever the Standard Model + general relativity are trying to do, please make up a less loaded term and popularize it. Until that replacement catches on, people will use "fundamental".

Well, that then might be a good time indeed, as @skdh argues, to step back and think what it is they are trying to do. I don't know any examples of someone setting out (literally) to discover the "fundamental laws of the universe" and succeeding.