SciAm reviews QG book (September issue)

[Martin]

September 2006 issue of Sci Am has a review by George Johnson

of the new book by Lee Smolin, called

The Trouble With Physics

 

George Johnson is a good one to get reviewed by.

http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/

http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/gravestone.jpg

 

Time magazine just had a review of Smolin's book by

Michael Lemonick (senior science writer for Time for past 15+ years).

The Time magazine review is already posted on web, free for download.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1226142,00.html

[timo]

I had some trouble finding out that you are talking about two rather disconnected things - a review in SciAm and a review in Time ... well, I should probably have read more carefully.

I didn´t bother looking for informations on the SciAm review (perhaps you could post some information about it or about the book itself) but I read the Time article you linked. I must admit I was quite disappointed by that article. Except for some very questionable statements (like " any university that doesn't have at least one string theorist on the payroll is considered a scientific backwater") I fail to find any information in the text. What does the article say?

[Locrian]

I have a question Martin - its one that occurs to me every time I see the title of this book.

 

Does the book actually pose problems for Physics, or does it merely pose problems for some specific area of physics he happens to work in?

 

Because it seems to me that areas like organic electronics, high temperature superconductivity, nanotechnology, lasing, and even cosmology and astrophysics in general, are all areas that continue to do interesting experiments, propose interesting problems and produce interesting theory. Do you know if he actually adresses that?

[Martin]

Hi Locrian and Atheist,

this thread would be a good place to gather links to comment on Smolin's book, which is due out around 15 September---just about one month.

 

My understanding so far is that the book is written for policy-makers and general reading public. I can't say definitely about it because i have not seen it yet.

 

Sabine Hossenfelder has, so far, provided the most informative review of the book that I have seen.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/08/lee-smolins-trouble-with-physics.html

 

She has included an interview with the author

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/08/lees-comments.html

 

If anyone has questions about the book, what it covers, what is the author's message, I think the best thing is to read the review by Sabine ("Bee").

 

She is a quantum gravity and string phenomenologist. (Phenomenology is the physics specialty that is in some sense translation BETWEEN theory and experiment---she investigates how to test various physics theories, if they are at present testable. IOW interpreting to give experimentalists ideas of things to try.)

 

Interesting person. Theoretical Physics PhD from Uni Frankfurt in 2003. While a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara, she was offered an Emmy Noether fellowship if she would come to Hamburg, but after discussions she turned it down to stay in North America. I couldn't understand her decision at the time.

 

Anyway Bee is more technically knowledgeable than the usual science journalist. So her review is more interesting to read, even though TIME MAGAZINE AND SCI AM get more visibility.

[Martin]

Atheist, did you happen to see this article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine?

 

http://www.faz.net/s/Rub163D8A6908014952B0FB3DB178F372D4/Doc~E53211581C7954CBE8043D084E51F1E95~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

 

It has a mention:

"Lob ist nicht alles, was Smolin beisteuert. Demnächst erscheint sein eigenes neues Buch, dessen Titel „The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next“ dem, was Woit will, verwandt genug ist, daß man von gemeinsamer Stoßrichtung sprechen darf."

 

There was also something in Die Zeit a while back about a related discussion. IIRC it was about a German Government study about particle physics theory funding policy and directions. Similar concerns to those (according to Bee's review) in Smolin's book. You may have seen it. Unfortunately I forget the details.

=========================

 

There are two related articles in the most recent issue of Science magazine.

This discussion is really beginning to get covered in the media!

 

Science 11 August 2006

Vol. 313. no. 5788, pp. 750 - 753

News Focus

THEORETICAL PHYSICS:

 

A 'Landscape' Too Far?

Tom Siegfried

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA--A radical new interpretation of string theory raises the prospect of untold numbers of separate universes with different physical laws--an idea that some physicists say threatens the foundation of their science...

 

 

News Focus:

THEORETICAL PHYSICS: A Reluctant Convert

Tom Siegfried

Science 11 August 2006: 752-753

=========================

[Martin]

I have a question Martin - its one that occurs to me every time I see the title of this book.

 

Does the book actually pose problems for Physics' date=' or does it merely pose problems for some specific area of physics he happens to work in?

...[/quote']

 

Locrian, I havent seen the book but I am pretty sure the answer is neither.

We have a lot to go on----earlier Smolin essays (The Crisis in Physics, Why no new Einsteins?) published in Physics Today magazine and the NY Academy of Sciences magazine Update. Also we have the very informative review on Bee Hossenfelder's blog and the Smolin interview.

 

I gave the links earlier to Bee's blog earlier.

Sabine Hossenfelder has, so far, provided the most informative review of the book that I have seen.

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/08/lee-smolins-trouble-with-physics.html

 

She has included an interview with the author

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/08/lees-comments.html

 

So we can tell pretty confidently that the problem he is describing is with the institutional program-oriented way fundamental research (at least here) is FUNDED. Grants and research positions are allocated by program instead of going to the mentally independent self-motivated INDIVIDUAL based on track-record. This allows the growth of HUGE WALMART-CHAIN RESEARCH PROGRAMS that monopolize theory support.

Symptoms: group-think, large numbers of similar research papers without enough progress to justify the effort---little chance for independent-minded researchers to investigate new approaches---little exposure of the herd of grad students and postdocs to alternative research lines.

 

In the two previous essays, Smolin pointed to examples in other countries (France was one IIRC) where promising young researchers are picked out and funded BY INDIVIDUAL MERIT for an extended period of time INDEPENDENT of whatever program they pursue. A young person who has demonstrated ability has a chance to CHOOSE what to work on.

 

In the US if you want to do fundamental theory and you want a career (grant, postdoc contract, invitations to conferences) you pretty much have to agree to do string. There is ONLY ONE non-string QG research group with more than a single faculty member in the whole US.

 

(outside the US there is Perimeter, Nottingham, Cambridge, Marseille, Utrecht, London-Imperial,.... but in the US the string monopoly is so tight there is only one place: Penn State!)

 

So Smolin's book is not even a critique of string! String monopoly dominance (especially in US) is just an EXAMPLE of the sterilizing effect of a particular strategy of research support.

Funding by program rather than by independent individual on the basis of talent and record leads to intellectual WALMART CHAINS with a branch at every major campus----and it just happens that string illustrates the point.

 

So I would say, judging by Smolin's own interview statements and by his previous essays, that the book is probably about THEORY FUNDING POLICY, in other words, INSTITUTIONAL issues.

 

that IMO is where the "trouble with physics" is, the "trouble" is not primarily with specific stringy ideas or non-ideas.

 

The present controversy could have been avoided if places like Harvard, Princeton, UC, had gotten the message earlier and had rapidly DIVERSIFIED (even by a small percent) in their fundamental theory research----by bringing in people from other places who were doing interesting work:

from places I mentioned (Perimeter-Waterloo, Marseille, London, Utrecht, Nottingham, maybe even stealing some from Penn State , and even the U of Western Ontario, even it has action in non-string QG!)

 

If top physics departments in US do NOT diversify asap (because say entrenched groupthink makes it slow or impossible) then another thing that could happen is DEFUNDING of fundamental theory research. As a US taxpayer and interested person, I would prefer to see spontaneous diversification of theory research----and I like Smolin's idea of funding individual talent with increased freedom of program choice.

[CPL.Luke]

What is the intention of the book?

 

Lee: "The book has more than one intention, some specifically related to the problems of quantum gravity and unification, others about what science is and how it works.

 

In its first conceptions, this was to be a book focused on the relationship between democracy and science and the role of disagreement, diversity of viewpoint and controversy in the process of science. I was very interested in a claim of the philosopher Feyerabend that the progress of science is fastest when the scientific community contains within it the largest diversity of views that the data allows. So first I wrote an essay on science and democracy that I proposed to turn into a book. The response was not very good. I was persuaded that an abstract argument would not be very convincing to anyone and it would be better to build the book around the story of a concrete case in science. Someone suggested that string theory would make a good case study to build my argument around. It took some time for me to convince myself to do that, as it would have been easier in some ways to write about a subject I hadn’t worked in.

 

In the end, I decided to write about string theory because I had just gone through a long and difficult process of choosing which direction to work on, and it had required me to think through in detail all the evidence for and against the different approaches. As someone who has worked on most of the major approaches to quantum gravity I do this from time to time. The last time I had done such an evaluation I had decided to switch from LQG back to string theory, now the result took me from string theory to DSR.

 

But the main theme remains broad issues of how science works and how it could be made to work better."

 

from http://backreaction.blogspot.com/200...-comments.html

 

so Smolin originally sought to use an abstract argument but was shot down, so he then turned to string theory as an example

 

 

Locrian the reason many people see a major problem in physics is that our fundamental understanding of the universe has not changed in the past 30 years or so. While its true that many fields have made astounding progress since then these fields are mostly in the realm of applied physics where the results are oriented towards applications and not a basic understanding.

 

Although I wouldn't say that the present slump is unprecedented in history as it seems smolin is suggesting, the revolution that took place in the first half of the 20th century only occured after a long slump from maxwell to relativity (did bohr do the atom before relativity?) and before the big shove on EM research in the 1800's there was anouther slump.

 

^not to say that slumps are good though.

[Martin]

Hi CPL, I just got back. I was going to find a link to that recent article in Science. Here is the main link

http://susy06.physics.uci.edu/proceedings.html

 

you go there and see a list of "on the web" stuff

and click on

A `Landscape' Too Far? [pdf], Science Magazine, 11 August 2006

 

when I have a minute I will get the actual URL for the PDF

(the landscape controversy is an important part of the picture)