“Not even wrong”
American Prometheus“Not even wrong” is a cutting expression that Wolfgang Pauli used to disparage other physicists, capturing his impatience with arguments he judged to fall below the threshold of a coherent claim.
Pauli’s Use
Pauli was known for a pugnacious manner and biting wit. If he detected a flaw in a lecturer’s argument, he was quick to rise and challenge it; his recurring verdict that other physicists were “not even wrong” extended that combative scrutiny beyond the lecture room.
Meaning and Context
The phrase is more severe than simply calling an argument mistaken: it dismisses the work as too faulty to count as a meaningful error. Pauli’s criticism of J. Robert Oppenheimer was distinct. He valued Oppenheimer’s imaginative ideas but separately complained about his calculations and insufficient attention to detail; the account does not identify Oppenheimer as a target of this particular expression.
