» The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Alternative View
Comment: Lee Smolin presents his case not for why string theory should be dropped, but why other theories should be pursued more vigorously. Rather than demonizing string theory, Smolin looks at the theory's successes and failures and then moves beyond that to discussing the sociology of science in general, and this is his main issue. Smolin says the system is set up to keep alternative theories out, while the fashionable theories get all the attention, and that this system is perhaps the reason why theoretical physics has been stuck for so long. Great book.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Absolutely superb...
Comment: So many reviewers have said so many things, let me just add this: During the past thirty years, we have seen the rise of religious ideology and its disastrous effects on our political system, not to mention our national finances and national reputation.

How interesting that science has experienced the same things, the same disasters born of the same focus on ideology rather than factuality, in the same time period.

This book is the first BIG public demonstration that this period may be coming to an end.

The disaster of string theory, and the Irag war, both prove the same thing: ignoring the dictates of reason, and setting aside facts for fantasy, always leads us to the same place: nowhere we want to be!

Thank you Lee Smolin.

A must-have for anyone interested in their world. And an instant classic.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent book - Must add a point other reviews have missed...
Comment: Peter Shor provides an excellent summarizing review of the first half to three-quarters of the book. But he largely skimped on what I think Smolin's main focus was, based on reading Smolin's website and the author's notes in the book, when he began the book. The last few chapters are concerning the role of academia in maintaining integrity throughout their ranks. If Smolin is correct, and this book provides excellent support to believe so, this has not been done with string theory, regardless of whether it is a correct theory or not. It is an extremely volatile subject that is likely to explode in the next few decades, and not only in physics but all academic fields.

I feel the situations is complicated, but can be roughly simplified as the selfishness and fear of a group of highly respected (and sometimes also highly paid, but not always) individuals who perceived that they were not making any progress and seek to protect their respected status through manipulation. They are essentially echoing an everyday experience - even the most ignorant person can seem quite capable if they merely exude enough self confidence. Well, according to the accounts by Smolin and many others, the string theorists are doing exactly that - holding onto excessive and unfounded confidence. Unfortunately, the first step in gaining knowledge is to admit that you already possess none.

Smolin takes a much less accusational stance than I do here, but he spends a significant amount of time in his book discussing this issue and it should not be left out of the reviews.

--G. Hill

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The String Snapped
Comment: Lee Smolin, a fair-to-middling popularizer of physics vents his anger at himself and others for pursuing the chimera of an 11 (or more) dimensional universe and a "theory" that produces 10^500 distinct theories. Unfortunately for the reader, Smolin manages not to define his terms, and gives no clue to how this number of 10^500 was arrived at, nor even what a distinct theory means.

The book is almost solely interesting for its treatment of the sociology of string theory and the way its practitioners monopolized high energy particle theory for much more than a decade.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: No Strings Attached
Comment: I jumped at this title when I saw it among my Amazon recommendations (Sometimes they do get these things right.) thinking to myself, "Ah, finally somebody out there (besides Feynman) has had the courage to state the obvious and actually write a book about it." And this Smolin does here in language I think most people with a basic science education can understand. Good show Lee!

But I do have a couple of somewhat minor problems with it. The first problem is, as far as I'm concerned, Smolin IS stating what has always seemed obvious to me. Indeed, ever since viewing the PBS special on String Theory and reading Brian Greene's book regarding it, I've been saying to myself: "What a lot of twaddle! This isn't science. It's more like some terribly bad mixture of mathematics and philosophy, making for bad theories in both fields." Actually, Smolin states as much here:

"Nevertheless, it seems to me that any fair-minded person not irrationally committed to a belief in string theory would see this situation clearly. A theory has failed to make any predictions by which it can be tested, and some of its proponents, rather than admitting that, are seeking to change the rules so that their theory will not need to pass the usual tests we impose on scientific ideas." P.170

Exactly! It truly baffled me that PBS would spend all this money on what was obviously a scientific farce. One might as well watch a rerun of Jeeves and Wooster. It's much more entertaining and Wodehouse, unlike Greene et al., knows himself to be a farceur. Anyway, the minor problem is that for me the above quote is all that need be really said about it (One might throw Feynman's in for good measure.). A whole book would seem to be unnecessary. But, obviously, there are scads of others who don't see that what Charlie Rose in his interview with Greene rhapsodized about as "The Theory of Everything" is not even a Theory of Nothing. It's not even a theory.

But Smolin did write this book, which brings me to my second problem here. Smolin is what I suppose I'll call an Einsteinian, but with a twist (no String Theory pun intended). As another reviewer has pointed out, this book has two parts. The first debunks String Theory. The second rails against "group think" and the state of current academia, in the States, anyway - All good and well, so far - But the last chapters are a bit odd for a book about physics, methinks. Here, Smolin reveals himself to be, for lack of a better word, a Romantic. He loves citing examples of people whom he calls "seers" rather than "craftsmen", of which Einstein is the best exemplar. People who hole themselves up alone and work things out based on some mystical insight. In particular, he cites one particular physicist who, during a hike in the mountains, had a vision that "time is unreal" and has spent the rest of his life working things out to prove that this is so. Exactly what it would mean for time to be unreal he does not elucidate.

This brings to mind Bertrand Russell's famous essay, "Mysticism and Logic" where he notes that the unreality of time is key to almost all mystical systems and philosophies. It is not confined to physicists; indeed, it is more associated with poets. Avers Yeats:

"For one moment
While on that grey stone I sat
I knew the One is animate
Mankind inanimate phantasy."

Russell, in his essay, concurs with Smolin, as I understand Smolin anyway; pointing out that almost all great ideas start out with some sort of mystical insight of this sort. But the way the book concludes, citing all these lone anchorite physicists, toiling away in their cottages and flats, is just a tad odd for a book debunking a notion because it's unfalsifiable and lacks empirical verification. Smolin seems to concur with Thoreau here, "No one ever followed his genius until it misled him."

To sum up, Smolin, in these latter chapters, seems to be a sort of Thomas Carlyle of 21st Century physics. He's an admirer of the Great Man/Great Idea interpretation of the history of science. This view certainly has its attractions. And, certainly, we associate all scientific revolutions with particular names: Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Feynman etc. I suppose they all qualify as "seers" in Smolin's view. Still, it doesn't quite square with the empirical approach, and this view of history in general has peculiar consequences. I can't get out of my mind the image of Goring reading a German translation of Carlyle's account of Frederick the Great to the Fuhrer as the Soviets close in on Berlin.

True story.

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