How Useful is the “Standard Model” of the Electronic Theory of Metals?

The first decades of the twentieth century caused such an overturning of our view of the physical world, with the discoveries of relativity and of quantum mechanics, that is has tempted many laymen, historians of physics, and even physicists to assume that everything since has been merely the working-out of the consequences. There is, in this view, no possibility of a “continuous revolution” à la Chairman Mao. I disagree with this view rather strongly. I take as my motto the American sports dictum: “It isn't over till it's over.” Surely the conceptual structure of the standard model of elementary particles, with its hidden and broken symmetries, its asymptotic freedom, etc., is bewilderingly different from the view of theoretical physics from 1930. All of its parts were bitterly contested by many of the original creators of quantum mechanics, in fact. The Feynman-Dyson revolution of “Renormalizing” field theory which many of the “classical” quantum theorists were reluctant to accept, was followed by a series of further extraordinary conceptual flip-flops before we arrived where we are now.