Reminiscences about Many Pitfalls and Some Successes of QFT Within the Last Three Decades

Abstract

Laymen and sometimes even physicists think of natural sciences, in particular of theoretical and mathematical physics often as subjects, which unfold according to an intrinsic logical pattern, with the limitations being set only by the conceptual and (in case of mathematical physics) mathematical developments of the times. This view certainly cannot be maintained in view of the present stagnation and crisis which in particular affects QFT, an area which in the past has been most innovating and fruitful, also in relation to other important areas of theoretical physics.