» Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law for Unity in Physical Law

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law for Unity in Physical Law Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Informative and worth reading
Comment: This book is a great summary of the way the string theory emerged - and how it failed.
The discussion of the behaviour of the string community is alike the dispute of the defenders of the old theory of Aristoteles with Galileo Galilei.
I enjoyed every minute reading this book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: be warned, this is a history book.
Comment:
First, some reviews say this is not a book for laymen. They're reading it wrong. I don't get the impression that even those with degrees in physics will be familiar with everything term this book, ... and much of it isn't explained.

It isn't "not explained" because he expects you to already know, .. it's not explained because it doesn't matter.

"In 1937 someone-or-ruther discovered the xyz theory and it was very important." Doesn't mean you should be able to derive a proof for xyz theory. You don't even really have to understand what exactly it says, .. and you won't unless you read another book. I'm not physicist. I just read over the names and keep going.

but when it comes down to it,.... a hundred of pages of dates and theory names are BORING.

To me. I don't care about history. Maybe someone else wants to read about what particle accelerators cost how much money.

Next, ... from the reviews I read here on amazon I expected to be getting a book that would tell me a *little* bit about the history of string theory, give me some idea of where it was lacking, and maybe some kind of picture of where physics is going.

I feel like, so far, this is not what I got. Maybe I should have read "the trouble with Physics" ?

I'm at page 140. I might give up. I just finally now hit the first chapter that relates at all to string theory. It is also a history chapter. Maybe I should have started at page 140?

I didn't want to read a pure history book.

Finally:

Early on he describes his decision to study mathematics. He says that if he were to keep studying physics, he would have to work on string theory to get funding, and he didn't want to. I thought that was an interesting predicament for him to be in, and it starts to hint at some kind of a political situation in academia. That little story was about all I got so far that interested me.

He goes on to describe how math is important to physics, and, undervalued.

Since then, there's been some reference to how undervalued math (his field) is in physics (the field he's complaining about) in every chapter since. Maybe more than once a chapter. Maybe once a paragraph. Maybe once a sentence. ok, maybe I'm exaggerating.

I'm bored of it. I really don't care. I just want to hear what the argument is about string theory. I don't even know anything about string theory,... I was curious, and so far I still don't have any idea what it is. I know it involves lots of dimensions and some kind of strings. I knew that much before I started reading!

It makes me feel pretty frustrated that I had this book mailed all the way to china, and carried it around for half a year thinking it was going to interest me when I finally got some free time to read it.

I'm going back and reading the reviews again. It looks like those who did read both books say the other one is better. I was going to give this book two stars... but since another book exists saying the exact same thing but better, It's only getting one.

It might be a good book for someone. It just wasn't what I was looking for, and I feel like the existing reviews are sort of mis-leading in terms of what this book is about. If you want to read a history of math/physics then fine, go for it... or... well, ... maybe still you should read "the trouble with physics" instead?

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The emperor has no clothes
Comment: I am writing this blurb in reply to Lubos Motl's (you guess it, another String practitioner whose livelihood is being threatened by this book) comment.

The fact that Peter Woit runs a blog critical of String only shows that he is consistent with his opinions. It should shock any impartial observer that in the eye of String practitioners--Lubos Motl being by no means exceptional among String people--this somehow automatically qualifies Woit and his readers as "crackpots". But what is even more shocking is the comparison to William Dembski's ID (Intelligent Design) blog, because String itself actually provides the perfect analogy to ID.

Let me elaborate. At the height of the recent Pennsylvania ID trial, many education experts came forward to defend the theory of Evolution. One of the hotly debated issues was the definition of a "theory" in science. The ID people, including Mr. George W the Decider, have argued repeatedly that, since Evolution is just a theory, other theories such as ID deserve at least some mention in the classrooms. The defenders of Evolution rely on the rebuttal that a theory in science actually means something that provides the best framework to explain a multitude of independent observations or experimental results and therefore has been accepted by scientific community at large. This, of course, is a lie. String has been paraded as a "theory" in every physics department for over two decades, and yet not only has it produced no testable prediction but it will almost certainly never be able to do so. This puts String squarely in the company of ID. Furthermore, just like ID has morphed constantly, free of the constraint of experimental confirmation, String has changed constantly ever since its inception. In other words, not only does String produce untestable predictions, but these predictions also change from year to year, often dramatically and in a mutually contradictive way. (Have they settled on the dimensionality of space-time yet? Is it 26, 10, 11, or all of the above?)

Other similarities exist, chief among them the religious ferver driving both groups to influence popular opinions and police dissenting thoughts, as exemplified by Lubos Motl's criticism of this book. But there is one big difference between String and ID. The String practitioners are insiders of the science community. They hire their own and make sure String-related papers get published. When a group dominates the peer-review process, it controls the career of every physicist in related fields. It then gains the power to influence, bribe, coerce and intimidate.

Of the five purported String supporters in general physics cited by Motl, I have not worked with Gell-Mann or Hawking, so I don't know what their excuses are (or if they actually need one, since String people tend to misrepresent general enthusiasm for high-energy theories as specific support for String). Prof. Weinberg is the head of a large String group even though he did not publish many real String papers himself. I would certainly count him in the String camp. Dr. Randall and Dr. Arkani-Hamid both took advantage of String referee's eagerness to find supporting work and padded their publication counts with a series of well-publicized "String-Phenomenology" (an oxymoron) papers, thus can hardly be called disinterested third parties either.

The rest of Motl's criticism can be condensed into two simple arguments. The first is that the author does not know details in String as well as he does. This is probably correct technically, particularly in light of the freely changing nature of String's "conclusions". But the core message (as well as the title) of the book is not that String gets the details wrong but that String has no details that can be proven wrong (or right). In this sense, Motl's straw-man argument is irrelevant.

The second point Motl made is, "The problematic statement that string theory makes no prediction is repeated hundreds of times, and in many particular contexts, such a statement becomes not only boring but also patently false." But Motl did not offer any justification why that statement is false. He simply proceeded to throw out more buzzwords and correct more details. One has to conclude that these buzzwords are nothing more than smoke screens meant to obscure the fact no justification could possibly be offered for his claim.

String is a unique phenomenon. It is the most "successful" pseudo science in modern history. Its catalyst is the unprecedented absence of real experimental input in high-energy physics during the past 30 years. Like a cancer, it turns otherwise worthy members of a formerly proud body into the self-promoting endlessly-propagating automatons sucking all resources dry. Later generations of historians of science will surely make their careers studying this bizarre event. Yet it has not begun. This book is not perfect, but as the first formal effort to recognize and document this historical phenomenon, it is a must read.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Deep, deep Thoughts
Comment: I picked up "Not Even Wrong" after working my way through "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin. Both books attack the problems of string theory from much the same direction - string theory shows none of the results necessary to be classified as anything more than a new type of math. In other words, if you can't use it to predict any new results and it only confirms old results by presetting all your variables to already known values, it's not science. And the opposite of science is religion, which is exactly how a lot of string theory adherents view this new math. "The Trouble with Physics" is an easier read, with lots of background, history and characters. "Not Even Wrong" assumes you are already up to speed on the theory, because Peter Wolfe spends very little time spoonfeeding the precepts and gets down to foundation level problems immediately. I have no background past high school level math and physics but can usually hold my own with popular science texts. I would not recommend "Not Even Wrong" as a beginning text or even intermediate - this is for people who understand the concepts already.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The religion of string theory
Comment: In the 90's, I started hearing about this wonderful leap in our understanding of physics, called "string theory". From the brief clips that I had read, I thought. "Wow, I want to know more." So when, "The Elegant Universe" came out, I immediately bought it and read it.
The book was very well written, and everything was presented in such an exuberant, upbeat manner. The illustrations were entertaining, but really all of the things that he covered scientifically, I knew had already been discovered previous to string theory. There were no new discoveries in the book, but everything in the book was being mixed with string theory, and then it was given a wonderful send off, with how string theory could solve everything. I'm sorry, but I couldn't at that point help but feel, that I had just been given a heaping helping dose of complete BS. He did add a lot of sugar to it though. No new discoveries. No real predictions. But lots of hopeful innuendoes, and future promises, if only the universe was in 10 dimensions. If, if, if, and then, wouldn't it all be grand.
I thought that I was all alone in feeling that the wool was being pulled down over my eyes. I thought that maybe there was something wrong with me. I read the book a second time, a few years later, and I bought Greene's second book, "The Fabric of the Cosmos", and yet still, my BS meter kept going off. It was kind of like those commercials that say things like. "This product works five times better than the leading brand." ...leading brand of what?
Finally some other books started coming out that explained that I was not the only one who felt this way. I read Lawrence Krauss' book, "Hiding in the Mirror". It was nice and polite in saying that "string theory" may not be the answer after all.
Lee Smolin came out with, "The Trouble with Physics". That book was even better at showing "string theory" for the mistake that it is, and how the physics academia have shamelessly promoted it. It made me feel sorry for those that were trying to pursue a higher education in physics.
Finally this book, "Not Even Wrong" written by Peter Woit. I've gotta admit that most of what he says in the first half of his book is over my head. I have never studied the math that is involved with particle physics or "string theory", but Woit has. He can point out all of the flaws in detail with "String Theory". From about chapter 12 on, I understood the ideas represented and discussed.
String theorists use phrases like, "It's the only game in town.", and "It's so elegant and beautiful, that there must be some truth to it." This book shows that some games just aren't worth playing, especially if you can never win. He also points out that the math involved is not really elegant or beautiful at all.
Can "String Theory" be proven wrong? No. But that's because it makes no predictions about anything. It's like an incomplete sentence. "The sky is ....". String theorists have been saying for over 20 years that they are just that close to solving everything. Woit can tell you that that's complete and total BS. No amount of math can complete the sentence and solve everything.
"Not Even Wrong" is also good at showing the scary situation that the physics community is in right now. Their self glorifying promotion, the greed, and pride have all attributed to this terrible situation in which they have created a belief system that is completely false. It is no longer science anymore, but they have gone so far down that road into falsehood that they are too embarrassed to say that they were mistaken. They have become a false religion of physics.
Scientists are not better people like they want you to believe. They are just people. They are prone to the same mistakes that everyone else is. Just as there are some good people, there are also some good scientists, but the opposite is also true. Don't be mislead.
If you are a student of physics in college, "Not Even Wrong" really should be read by you. "The Trouble with Physics" was an easier read, and so if you are a layman with a basic knowledge of physics, this book would be for you. If you are just beginning your adventure in science and physics, but are wondering about "string theory", "Hiding in the Mirror" would be the easiest book to understand.

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