[anamax]

> One way is to find particles that the model predicts. If they are found then we know that the standard model is in fact correct.

Actually, finding those particles doesn't tell us that the standard model is correct. Finding those particles just tells us that it doesn't have some specific errors.

One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science.

[CamperBob2]

One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science.

To be fair, you can only prove something "correct" in math to the extent that it agrees with the underlying axioms. In broader scientific fields, an assertion is just as "correct" if it agrees with the underlying models.

In mathematics, you can challenge the validity of axioms, which is usually a pointless thing to do, or you can point out, as Goedel did, that some assertions will remain unprovable within any given framework of axioms. So the math guys know where they stand, at least.

In many areas of science, the experimental method is becoming less and less useful over time. Particle physicists need to know how well the Standard Model agrees with reality, because so much of their future work will depend on assumptions that can only be tested against the model. (We won't see a bigger-than-LHC facility constructed anytime soon, put it that way, and that was the case even before the recent global financial problems came to light.)

Similarly, the work of climatologists can be, and has been, attacked because it depends on models, and the map is not the territory. As with the Standard Model of particle physics, an assertion can be shown to be unequivocally true or false within the bounds of a given climate model, but not in reality, because we only have one Earth to experiment with. In both climatology and particle physics, the lab door is now locked. The models are all we have to go by, so it's really important that we get them right.

[dedward]

Well, mathematics is somewhat unique in that ultimately, it's purely detached from reality - it's purely conceptual.

When we can use it to model the things we percieve, that's great, but at it's most fundamental level, mathematics is not a natural science (if that's the right term) - it's a human construct - purely abstract.

But to be fair, when we say "prove" in common speech with regards to science, do we really need to say "science can't prove anything?" - every time? Most people get that on forums that discuss such things - "proven" in these things simply mean their theories checked out. We'll never know what the universe really "IS" - we only know what we percieve, directly or indirectly,and what we can predict. It's still turtles, all the way down.

- not literally that it's an absolute truth - that's impossible, as you said, other than in mathematics.

[xiaoma]

I've had many dreams in which the rules of gravity no longer held, but I've never had a dream in which three things and four other things didn't make a total of seven things.

There's something more absolute and universal about math.

[pbhjpbhj]

I've had a reality in which 0 (zero) things makes two things ... [particle-antiparticle pairs appearing in quantum fluctuations in vacuo in case that's too terse].

Similarly thousands of things can make up a single thing. [Like bosons in a Bose-Einstein Condensate].

Or in the case in point where you just stick various particles in a pot and pull out some other particles with corresponding energy. For example in beta decay a neutron changes to a proton emitting a W- particle which itself decays to an electron and electron-anti-neutrino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beta_Negative_Decay.svg).

Ultimately maths is axiomatic, so not universal, and Godel shows that it's not absolute.

[Achshar]

Yes, i think over simplification killed it. The existence of higgs will only tell us that the model was not wrong in it's prediction and will hence increase the credibility and chances of success of other predictions. I stand corrected.

[binarycheese]

"One difference between science and math is that you can't prove anything "correct" in science."

Excellent analogy