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Hadron bootstrap: triumph or frustration?

OCT 01, 1970
Only after fundamentalists repeatedly fail to explain more than part of the hadron spectrum will they gradually accept the self‐consistent particle model of the bootstrappers.
Geoffrey F. Chew

Physicists usually perceive their discipline’s goal as the reduction of nature to fundamentals, and the high‐energy arena has correspondingly been dominated by the search for “basic building blocks.” Finding the quark is for the moment regarded by many as the ultimate prospective triumph; failure to find some such fundamental entity is equated with frustration. There exists, nonetheless, a 180‐degree inverted point of view, which envisions the absence of fundamentals as the ultimate triumph; this is the bootstrap attitude.

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References

  1. 1. M. Gell‐Mann, Phys. Let. 8, 214 (1964);
    G. Zweig, CERN preprint 8419/TH.412 (1964).

  2. 2. G. F. Chew, Science 161, 762 (1968).https://doi.org/SCIEAS

  3. 3. G. F. Chew, M. Gell‐Mann, A. Rosenfeld, Scientific American 210, no. 2, 74 (1964).

  4. 4. R. J. Eden, P. V. Landshoff, D. I. Olive, J. C. Polkinghorne, The Analytical S‐Matrix, Cambridge U.P., London (1966).

  5. 5. P. D. B. Collins, E. J. Squires, Regge Poles in Particle Physics, Springer‐Verlag, New York (1968).

  6. 6. G. Morpurgo, Proc. 14th Internatl. Conf. on High‐Energy Physics, Vienna (1968), page 225.

  7. 7. B. Maglic, Rapporteur’s Report to the 1969 Lund Internatl. Conf. on High‐Energy Physics.

  8. 8. S. Weinberg, Proc. 14th Internatl. Conf. on High‐Energy Physics, Vienna (1968), page 253.

  9. 9. G. Veneziano, PHYSICS TODAY 22, no. 9, 31, (1969).

More about the Authors

Geoffrey F. Chew. Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley, California.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 23, Number 10

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