Sunday, October 15, 2006

Physics is Dead

Not Even Wrong & The Trouble with Physics.
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5 comments:

Arelcao Akleos said...

I told you before, in Houston I think, that Lee Smolin was the most impressive speaker on physics [and just about any subject] I heard at Chicago. Very very impressive.....
But I was less enthralled by his popular version of the "evolutionary black hole" thesis in his late 90's book "The Life of The Cosmos". The book itself was very readable, but his thesis went much further down the Frank Tipler Highway to Crank Hell than I'd expected. Even sent him an e-mail [properly disguised, of course] one drunk early morning in Taipei, in '99, which some snarky questions which --for god knows what reason-- he took to heart and offered very testy answers to [rather, very testy non-answers] . And now he has joined the "Physics Ist Krap" crowd...... So, should I read it to find out why? What's your recommendation, JJ?
By the way, he is now ensconced in one of the Great Canuckian well oiled and moneyed intellectual insane asylums, by the name of the Perimeter Institute. The lucky bastard.

10/15/2006 1:43 AM
Mr roT said...

Read these books? Nah. I don't have a dog in this fight.

10/15/2006 1:46 AM
Tecumseh said...

This reviewer disagrees with the author in his claim that string theory is not a "beautiful" theory. And it is the mathematical formalism that is used in string theory that gives it its beauty. Indeed, just the algebraic geometry alone that is employed in string theory is an example of this. That combined with the differential geometry, complex manifolds, and algebraic topology makes string theory a beautiful multi-faceted mathematical gem. That being said, there are many ideas in string theory that deserve to be classified as "speculative" mathematics, as the author does in this book. This classification arises because of the presence of the ubiquitous path integral, an object that has resisted rigorous mathematical formulation.

So yes, the mathematical formalism behind string theory is beautiful, and intoxicates those who contemplate it. But a physical theory must be more than just "mental masturbation" (a characterization imputed to the physicist Murray Gell-Mann in the book). It must also make predictions that can be measured in the laboratory, and these measurements must be reproducible and above all understandable to interested parties. The author does not find any of these predictions in the string theory as it exists at the present time, and he is correct in his claims.

Vivent les Mathematiques!

10/15/2006 9:13 PM
Tecumseh said...

By the way, he is now ensconced in one of the Great Canuckian well oiled and moneyed intellectual insane asylums, by the name of the Perimeter Institute.

Yes, that was the talk of the town last I was in Ontario. That place oozes with money from Mr. Blackberry, an ex-grad student in Physics, who thinks the hard sciences should be encouraged. Canuckistan is good, sometimes.

10/15/2006 9:17 PM
Mr roT said...

A little patent infringement will go a long way and a little philanthropy will assuage guilt.

10/17/2006 12:58 AM

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