The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next |  | Author: Lee Smolin
Publisher: Mariner Books
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Rating:  123 reviews
Sales Rank: 11056
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 416
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Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 061891868X
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.14
EAN: 9780618918683
ASIN: 061891868X
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
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Product Description
In this illuminating book, the renowned theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues that fundamental physics -- the search for the laws of nature -- losing its way. Ambitious ideas about extra dimensions, exotic particles, multiple universes, and strings have captured the public’s imagination -- and the imagination of experts. But these ideas have not been tested experimentally, and some, like string theory, seem to offer no possibility of being tested. Yet these speculations dominate the field, attracting the best talent and much of the funding and creating a climate in which emerging physicists are often penalized for pursuing other avenues. As Smolin points out, the situation threatens to impede the very progress of science. With clarity, passion, and authority, Smolin offers an unblinking assessment of the troubles that face modern physics -- and an encouraging view of where the search for the next big idea may lead. |
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 123
 A Must Read for All Scientists November 20, 2009
David B Richman (Mesilla Park, NM USA)
I am not a theoretical physicist, I am in fact a biologist, but Lee Smolin's book "The Trouble With Physics" immediately struck a chord. I have been interested in physics as lay person, especially relativity, quantum theory and astrophysics, and occasionally read books on the subject. This book especially stood out as I think that some aspects of biology have also been hijacked into unproductive paths which like string theory seem to have lives of their own. Beside the physical world by necessity impinges on and in fact encompasses the biological world. Thus physical theory is important to biologists at a fundamental level.
Smolin has finally put an end to the pretense that string theory, as it now stands, actually is science. While some discrete string theories (he says that there are ten to the 500th distinct string theories, or more than the number of atoms in the known universe) have been tested (all so far have been falsified), most of the rest are not yet described in a way that can be tested. String theory thus becomes like the existence of God- a unscientific problem. Yet people working on string theory are getting grants and advancing in their careers, while other physicists following possibly more fruitful lines of research get nowhere.
The questions that need to be answered in physics are probably not going to be answered by string theory and in fact some researchers in string theory (but by no means all) look to me like some of the researchers working on the malaria vaccine. They are pulling in grant money that could be used better elsewhere to do essentially nothing.
This book is indeed an eye opener about the so-called purity of science. Scientists are people like other people and some are good at what they do while others are mediocre and a few even incompetent, delusional, self-serving or even criminal. The only thing that keeps scientists on the up and up are the principles that make good science depend on verification of theories with empirical evidence. If an idea cannot be tested it is in fact not a scientific question. Dependence on authority, tradition, or preconceived notions is simply not science.
Smolin has reminded us of this fact and while I am not sure that his ideas about how to cure the problem in physics will work, his book is a much needed correction to the fad of string theory and its stifling effect on the science. I recommend this book to anybody who is involved in or interested in any of the sciences.
 the trouble with Smolin October 15, 2009
Scott C. Locklin (Berkeley CA)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book came out at around the same time as Woit's "not even wrong," which is on a similar topic. Both contain decent descriptive histories of what string theory is, and where it went pear-shaped. Both books explain the sociological and 'economic' forces in building up a large community of very smart people which doesn't work properly. Both also miss out on one important thing I thought was pretty obvious. What all quantum gravity people (Smolin and his crew of merry misfits included with the string theorists) are doing is entirely aesthetically driven. There is no reason gravity should have a quantum theory any more than a ham sandwich should have a quantum theory associated with it. There are no experimental, or even observational reasons to presume gravity has a quantum limit. It's all aesthetics. They're nice aesthetics, but science has no real business doing aesthetics. The image Smolin paints of his italian colleague waving a knife around at the idea that the universe might not live up to his aesthetic ideals is supposed to be funny, but it is exactly what is wrong. Science is all about learning about how the universe works, not seeking aesthetic answers to questions that the universe isn't asking. The search for quantum gravity itself is nothing but an aesthetic wish.
In his first chapter he defines what he claims are the five great outstanding problems in physics today. I must respectfully disagree with all but his second one. The four I disagree with are essentially cosmological questions; the questions string theory (and Smolin and Rovelli's rival idea of "loop quantum gravity") ultimately attempt to answer. Quantum gravity may, as people like Freeman Dyson think, be a silly question. Gravity may no more have a quantum limit than steam engines and other grossly macroscopic objects do. Assuming gravity does have a quantum limit may be the great folly of theoretical physics of the last 50 years. His outstanding problems numbers three and four, I count as essentially the same: come up with a unified field theory that predicts fundamental constants observed in nature. Why should things work this way, besides the fact that it would make Lee and his pals happy? These ideas are, to my mind, problematic for the same reasons the idea of quantum gravity itself is problematic. While many people do indeed think the universe should have some sort of ultimate theory which can unify the particles and forces, and predict why the fine structure constant is what it is, the reasons people think so are historical and aesthetic. Aesthetically, physicists like only having to remember a few things, rather than many things. Historically, the unification of magnetism, electricity and light into one theory really was a tremendous breakthrough in human knowledge. 50 years later, all manner of practical uses were found for it. Let us compare this to the most successful unification of modern times, the electro-weak theory (a unification of a force governing certain kinds of nuclear decay with that of electromagnetism). Unlike Maxwell's equations, electroweak theory is abysmally ugly. Unfortunately for aesthetics, it does appear the universe works this way. The benign god who wrote Maxwell's equations must have contracted electroweak theory out to some perverse lesser daemon, like Loki. Comparing practical implications 50 years from the creation of electroweak theory: there have been none. I'll go out on a safe, fat limb and assert there will be none, ever; at least if we continue to think of that area as "done" somehow and pretty much ignore it. As for the many outstanding problems in astronomical cosmology which Smolin collects together as the fifth major outstanding problem in physics; I find it hard to get too worked up about them, as the astronomers seem to find new "anomolies" every time they fire up a new telescope. Sure, it is interesting and worth thinking about, and it is nice to have someone telling the telescope boys what to look for, but there are more frightening lacunae in physics which should be on the table. The fundamentals of quantum mechanics, mesoscopic physics, the second law of thermodynamics, self-organization and emergent properties in matter; these appear to me much more pressing issues than trying to stick the square peg of gravity in the round hole of quantum mechanics.
I have this idea that physics, along with Western civilization in general, never fully escaped from the wandervogel era "playing indian in the woods" navel gazing of post WW-1 Europe. In fact, I think as a result, physics attracts moosh-headed (though intelligent) people who think this sort of "looking into the mind of god" thinking is, well, acceptable, when it really shouldn't be for a serious scientist. Or any kind of serious person outside of religious or metaphysical study. In the Victorian era which spawned the ideas of Maxwell and (early) Einstein, a theoretical physicist's job was to come up with models that fit the experimental data; a physicist was a sort of mathematical phenomenologist. He was not an aesthetician. An interesting observation which might be made is how physics followed many other formerly rigorous fields in to the badlands of 'theory.' String theory is to Victorian physics what modern Literary theory or artistic technique is to their Victorian analogs. Certainly, the modern thing can be said to be more 'sophisticated' -but it is also more useless for understanding the world. Postmodernism? Intellectual laziness brought on by declining standards? The corrosive effects of professionalization and bureaucratization of the academy? This is something I wish people would address, and quickly, but it will probably fall to future historians of science.
Smolin is a friend of several of my friends, so it pains me to have to say bad things about him, but his idea that more affirmative action is going to help physics is laughably insane. I'd go so far as to say this is probably a symptom of the type of mental illness which thinks doing quantum gravity is important because it must be so, aesthetically. Physicists did better before they were required by their Universities to engage in ritual Maoist witch hunts against racism and sexism. That's an obvious historical fact. Whether or not these things are actually meaningfully correlated: doing the opposite of what our forefathers did isn't going to get us anywhere. I mean, he's on the right track: you should try to hire people who think differently from what everyone else is doing. How exactly are you going to institutionalize this? Poor Einstein couldn't get a university job in 1904 -so if Universities were that moronic then, we haven't a hope of getting this right now.
The real solution to this problem is a lot more radical and frightening to people who work within the University-Industry axis of mediocrity. It's also positively heretical to people who worship education as some kind of secular sacrament. To my mind, the strength of the institution you belong to is the weakness of the individual. The very idea of a University is medieval and feudalistic, or at best Industrial. You want to do real original research? Quit academia and become a free lance consultant. It's what I have done, and freed of the bureaucratic need to churn out nonsense papers, or spend my time baking vacuum chambers, my creativity has blossomed. I'll never be an eminence grise like Smolin in any subject, as I'm not as clever as he is, but I will likely die richer, and have enjoyed my life more than chaining myself to some horrific bureaucracy whose purpose is to crush all original thought. Do you think Kepler would have had his brilliant idea if he were rotting in a University or government observatory somewhere? I don't, and I think if you want to be Einstein or Kepler, your path is clear, and is far away from a safe life.
Our intelect is very poor face the Infinit in God September 14, 2009
Prof Dr Neves Silva (Portugal)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Cientific Progress is always looking to the unknown.
But the unknown is to big to be known by humans that become enraptured by the Infinit.
So, later on, we start again and again, trying to know a little bit more, generation after generation.
 Kindle Version is Faulty September 7, 2009
David Katz
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
I downloaded the free sample, and was impressed enough to buy the book in a Kindle edition. It downloaded (after a long time) to my Kindle, but was unreadable, and wouldn't download successfully at all to my iphone. Amazon ignored my on-line plea for help. A few days later, by telephoning the Amazon help desk, I was told that the file was faulty, and that I would be issued a refund, the Kindle version of the book would be withdrawn from the Amazon website, and the publisher would be contacted to prepare a new Kindle file, which might take months. None of these things has happened yet, a week later. Doesn't Amazon test Kindle files before putting them on sale?
Bar level musings presented as philosophy July 26, 2009
Dayton G. Thorpe
6 out of 13 found this review helpful
This book starts off with an interesting review of the recent history of theoretical physics, but veers horribly off course when it starts talking about string theory. I was hoping for an interesting discussion of Loop Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin's particular specialty, but instead found a poorly explained diatribe against string theory and string theorists. While he repeatedly claims that he has immense respect for string theorists, his ad homenim attacks against them make this claim doubtful. An initially promising chapter on sociology turns out to be the longest personal attack on string theorists the book contains. He concludes by summing up his seven complaints about string theorists (note, not string theory): These are: "1. Tremendous self confidence...2. An unusually monolithic community...3. self identification with the group...4. the boundary between the group and other experts...5. A disregard for and disinterest in other experts...6. A tendency to misinterpret the evidence optimistically...7.A lack of appreciation for the extent to which a research program ought to involve risk." What does any of this have to do with science? Or the history of science? Or the philosophy of science? This is an entire book about how arrogant string theorists are. This type of writing belongs in a tween blog, not a respected academic's published work.
The book's sparse evidence is contained mostly in end notes and quotations. Several times I found that his explanations meaningfully distorted quotes that immediately followed. Passages from footnotes are misrepresented even more. This makes me very suspicious of any statement or argument by others that he paraphrases with no direct quote or footnote. Smolin seems to willfully distort the facts. Much of the book is about what string theorists have not done, always with the evidence "that I am aware of." However, Smolin seems to have made no attempt to find out what they have done. For example, at one point he claims that attempts to research Bell's Inequality and hidden variable theories have been suppressed for decades. This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. Decades have been spent designing ever more precise explorations of the foundations of quantum mechanics. Ironically, the same day I finished the book and wrote this review, Science magazine published an article describing the most recent significant experimental disproof of hidden variables theories with citations to many many other articles about the same topic. Smolin practically describes a conspiracy among powerful physicists to suppress this research. The low point of the book comes when this fact bending meets his ad homenim attacks. At one point after explaining his own views on the nature of time he claims that no string theorist has ever had a single original idea about time. What purpose does that claim serve other than to insult all string theorists? In what way does it enlighten the reader? The placement of this statement right after his own views on time emphasizes the real reason for the book: Lee Smolin's justification of his own arrogance. As a side note, I know two string theorists. One of them focuses much of his research on exploring the possibility of there being two dimensions of time. While he very well may be wrong (which he acknowledges, despite Smolin's claim that string theorists are overly self confident suppressors of alternative research) it certainly qualifies as original.
Don't waste your time on this book. It presents an extremely hostile view of theoretically physics that will give you nothing you couldn't learn from a better book.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 123
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