Why the words we use in physics obscure the true nature of reality

Simple words like 'force' and 'particle' can mislead us as to what reality is actually like. Physicist Matt Strassler unpacks how to see things more clearly

Growing up in the US during the oil embargo of the early 1970s, I was bombarded by public service announcements encouraging people to conserve energy. But at a very young age, I also read that “energy is always conserved”, according to physics. This baffled me. If nature automatically conserves energy, why would human efforts to do so be needed?

I soon realised that physicists don’t exactly speak English. They employ a dialect full of familiar-sounding terms with unfamiliar meanings . Worse still, many words, including simple ones like “force” and “mass”, don’t even signify what physicists originally intended.

Experiments on how anaesthetics alter the behaviour of tiny structures found in brain cells bolster the controversial idea that quantum effects in the brain might explain consciousness Though I agree that data and equations are paramount, physicists convey their ideas, both to each other and to non-scientists, using language. When their wording is ambiguous or opaque, essential lessons about the cosmos may be misunderstood.

So let’s look closer at the language of physics, and how three seemingly simple words have morphed over time, becoming snares for the unwary. Such deceptive terms and metaphors are widespread in physicists’ dialect. In pausing to contemplate them,…New Scientist

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