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Strung Out
Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong.
The acceptance of string theory into the mainstream lexicon is curious. Its advanced mathematics precludes all but the most highly trained and talented scientists and mathematicians from understanding it. It's science that requires faith in those who tell us how the universe works. In The Trouble With Physics, Lee Smolin argues that this faith may have been misplaced.
The book opens with its most engaging sequence, 50-odd pages in which the great discoveries in the history of physics are cast as a sequence of unifications. Toward the end of this section, Smolin describes an experiment that settled the dispute between Einstein's theory of general relativity and a competing theory that unified electromagnetism with gravity by positing an extra dimension. The experiment confirmed Einstein's predictions, sending the extra-dimension theory to the dustbin. Because string theory requires an as-yet-undetermined number of extra dimensions, Smolin subtly manages to denigrate it by aligning it with an unsuccessful predecessor. In doing so, Smolin also indirectly aligns himself with the physicist whose name has become synonymous with genius.
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Columbia mathematician Peter Woit argues that calling string theory a theory is exceedingly generous. The title of his new book, Not Even Wrong, was a phrase reserved by renowned physicist Wolfgang Pauli for ideas that were so incomplete that they could only aspire to someday being wrong. Indeed, being wrong is a problem for string theory — the few hypotheses it has suggested are untestable, and there are so many variations of string theory that it's possible to find a version to fit virtually any experimental observations. Consequently, it fails to meet Karl Popper's criteria of falsifiability for science, leaving string theory in the murky, decidedly unscientific realm of metaphysics.
Both Smolin and Woit conclude by criticizing the hegemony of string theory in the top physics departments in the country, calling for more room in those departments for non-string theories. Of the two books, Smolin's is the more accessible to the lay reader as well as the more even-keeled. Woit's tome is in places more technical and occasionally more vitriolic, much like his frequently visited and often contentious blog of the same name. Importantly, though, both books remind readers that popularity and pervasiveness are not the criteria upon which scientific disputes should be settled.
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This is a very astute review. Do you suggest that Dr Peter Woit should be discussing alternatives to string more, and criticising string less? The problem with that is that, in order to engage string theorists - who basically control the HEP-TH section of arXiv.org (string theorist Prof. Jacques Distler of the University of Texas is on the arXiv.org advisory board for that, and people like Dr Peter Woit and Professor Lee Smolin aren't), and constitute the major journal referees, etc. So if Dr Woit appears more vitrolic and technical, it is an attempt to engage string theorists. Nothing will ever change unless the mainstream can be forced to confront the problems in string theory objectively. I do think from personal experience that the problem is NOT finding alternatives which hold more promise, but is getting the mainstream to invest its resources in the alternatives - I had papers which make checkable predictions regards the problem rejected by string theorist referees on Classical and Quantum Gravity, but the same paper was published in Electronics World later and nobody has been able to fault it (at least so far).
In England, there is a problem with a 50% decline in physics students over the time since the mid 1980s when string theory has taken over media hype. When I wrote about this problem, which is peculiar to England due to the great media hyping here of Professor Stephen Hawking (who only discusses string theory in his "A Briefer History of Time"), in October 2003 Electronics World, I pointed out that university physics departments are closing because "gentlemen [are] popularising without evidence extra dimensions and multiple universes." I was basically sacked as a journalist as a result of a flood of abusive, non-scientific, emails and letters which the editor received. Those the editor forwarded to me came from people, at least two of whom - when googled - turned out to be research students of the same string theory professor. Although the editor refused to publish the majority (mainly because they contained libel or language issues), it did show that the popularity of string theory is pretty invincible. No matter what you prove about it being valueless, people will go on sneering at alternatives to string theory, because by consensus that is the "sensible thing" to do about alternatives.
Nigel
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