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 | Lee Smolin | Words from an insider

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The Trouble With P...

	The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next Lee Smolin Houghton Mifflin, 2006 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 107 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent History of Physics

Lee Smolin has written a thorough and readable book about the fact that string theory has dominated physics for more than twenty years without nailing down the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) that we all anxiously await.
His conclusion: "There needs to be an honest evaluation of the wisdom of sticking to a research program that has failed after decades to find grounding in either experimental results or precise mathematical formulation."

String theory in its various permutations became a hot topic in academic physics from around the mid-1980s, but by the end of the 1990s it had been suggested that all the conjectured and constructed string theories might be unified in a deeper (and mysterious) theory called M-theory.

According to Lee Smolin, the trouble with physics is not only that string theory may be wrong, but that its popularity has squelched innovative thinkers who wanted to take other directions within the field of physics. It became very hard for a physicist who was not interested in string theory to get a job. The academic and research communities simply did not provide jobs or grant money for physicists who disbelieved string theory or who wanted to pursue other avenues of research.

Wading through the actual physics in Smolin's book was a bit of a chore for this English major, but the history he provides is interesting and his critique of academia is clear and convincing. His overall tone is positive and upbeat in spite of the profuse apologies he keeps making to his colleagues in string theory. He ends with suggestions as to how to move the study of physics forward in ways that are more intellectually diverse than they have been in the era of string theory.

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Words from an insider

I quite like this book. In fact I like it so much I recommended it to a friend of mine who has a Ph.D. in physics, and I decided to buy one for my professor in college (I studied physics as an undergrad). I cannot say I agree with all the author has to say, for example, why is he opposed to the "anthropic solution" or the "landscape of string theories" while proposing his own "cosmological natural selection"? To me, at least philosophically, the "anthropic solution" could be plausible, even though it is not testable.

That said, the most important insights I got from this book is that two main things led physics astray in recent decades: 1. over-obsession with mathematics and negligence of physical intuition or insights; 2. what the author calls "sociology". Perhaps the tenure system is the real hindrance to the advancement of science (not just physics).

I think this is a very frank book from someone "in the know" and it offers some fresh perspectives, I think anyone who thinks about pursuing a career in theoretical physics really should read it (as the author says, "theoretical physics is hard, really hard", if you are not a real genius and have extraordinary perseverance, you probably should do some more practical). For the rest of us, it is a good read nevertheless!

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Clear exposition of science for the layman

Lee Smolin has written an excellent overview of the current state of science and especially, string theory. As a layman I found his earlier chapters more valuable, as he describes in clear and easy to understand language, the history of science up to the discovery of string theory. The later chapters deal with the lack of progress in theoretical physics since the mid 1980's, and the reasons for it.
Smolin is an excellent writer and the book is easy to read. There is so much material in the book that I intend to read it a second time.

Would you like a little honesty?

This book is not a physics entertainment, feel good, kind of book, and here's why.
Lee Smolin has tried to accurately portray the troubling issues within the field of physics these days. The physics community as a whole has seemed to have lost it's ethics or standards by which something should be promoted or studied. This is probably due to the fact that the hiring practices in the physics community is unethical, and so people with any real ethics, and a true vision, are weeded out.
The main example given in his book for an idea that has been way over promoted, is string theory. String theory -(as brought out in his book on page 352) is a theory that makes no predictions and therefore not cannot be subject to being disproved by any experiment, but nor can it be proven either. However, as stated even earlier in his book, string theory is not even a complete theory, but only a conjecture based on conjectures, that it may eventually someday contain a complete theory somewhere in all of those calculations. More probably not however.
Does he just complain? No. Professor Smolin does have the vision to at least be able to tell us in what direction we should be looking in, for a furtherance of progress. We should be asking more questions about the foundational concepts of physics. No, not all of foundational issues have been solved, just ignored. There are several assumptions about gravity, light, relativity, and quantum mechanics that have not yet been completely verified. We are indeed missing something very crucial that would allow us to make another leap forward in our understanding of the laws of our universe. This book covers these issues in detail, but it appears that the only people involved in trying to solve these worthwhile endeavors, have for the most part been put to the side by the physics community as a whole.
If we are wrong about, or don't fully understand the foundational concepts of our physics, then how can we feel that our current conjectures are sound? If the foundation is weak and incomplete, then the rest of the house is no good. If even just some of the questions regarding our foundational issues could be solved, then a seer could put some understanding to it. Do I think that the next great leap in our understanding of the laws of the universe, will answer all 5 of the great problems that Smolin has alluded too in theoretical physics? No, but it may help answer one or two of them. We're still a long long ways off from understanding how things were made, and no doubt more questions will arise to fill in for any that are eventually answered.
I give Smolin an "A" for effort, and an "A" for his candidness. String theory get's an "F", and so does the academic community. If you want the truth about string theory, and an insight into what we should be exploring in physics, then you should read this book.

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Quaint questions, useless answers

In his 2006 book, "The Trouble with Physics," Prof. Lee Smolin of the University of Waterloo proposes to plow up the previous 30 years of theoretical physics and reseed the ground. He claims that string theory and other adventures following the 1973 standard model of particles failed to make progress solving underlying problems. Smolin proposes five unsolved problems.

While Smolin would have readers think his views are radical, actually they are timid. Problems he poses are grand issues of philosophy. Solutions to them whould have no practical uses. Smolin continues a tradition of three generations of theoretical physicists who, unable to solve problems of practical importance, decamp to remote quarters where they hope to apply skills they already possess rather than develop new ones.

A genuinely radical approach would roll back the previous 80 years of theoretical physics, returning to the many unsolved problems of quantum mechanics from the late 1920s and developing a theory that reliably predicts from first principles commonly needed properties of matter that agree with practical measurements, including: (1) full electromagnetic emission and absorption spectra of any atom or small molecule at any ionization state, (2) collision cross-section between electrons and any atom or small molecule, (3) collision cross-sections between any atoms and small molecules, (4) structure and interaction of complex molecules, (5) structure of single-crystal solids, (6) full energy and decay spectrum of any atomic nucleus, (7) collision cross-section between free neutrons and any atomic nucleus.

There are several other such problems. A successful theory will require only four or five natural constants for scale, electromagnetism and nuclear forces and might not involve any knowledge of particle structure. A theory that solves these problems will be of signal interest for materials development, industrial chemistry, molecular biology and many other applications.

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