A Quantal Hypothesis for Hadrons and the Judging of Physical Numerology

Readers who know little or no physics should not be deterred by the many mentions of physics in this chapter, for most of the required physics is spelt out in Appendix A. The chapter has two parts. Part 1 is an updating of Good (1988b) in which a quantal hypothesis is discussed concerning the rest masses of ‘elementary particles’. The discussion depends, perhaps necessarily, on subjective probabilities. The hypothesis is largely numerological in the non-occult sense to be described more fully in Part 2. That part deals with the difficult topic of judging more general numerological assertions. Both parts might shed some light on how we choose between scientific theories in general. The chapter is somewhat speculative and this is appropriate in a Festschrift for John Hammersley. Moreover some of his early work (Hammersley 1950, 1954) dealt in part with a quantal hypothesis. Quantal hypotheses have occurred in physics, chemistry, genetics, and archaeology.