I’ve just finished reading The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin. If you are in anyway interested in modern physics then I recommend it. It’s great fun and very thought provoking. To describe the content, I guess Smolin has three or four things going on simultaneously.
The motivating theme is his worry over the extreme bias towards String Theory. In his view, given the problems inherent in the theory, there should be significantly more diversity in research other options and rival theories. To focus on this one option is a disaster because of the likelihood that most physicists are following each other down a dead end.
This leads to a parallel theme — the general need to promote as much diversity in scientific research as possible. Smolin’s view is that it is the people with maverick ideas (and who have the boldness to follow them up regardless) who lead us forward in our understanding of the world and our system must find a way to accommodate these people effectively.
To support and illustrate these ideas, the book nicely gives a survey of physics in recent history and as it stands — including the developement of relativity and quantum theories, the state of String Theory (and M-Theory, etc.) and some of the more interesting alternatives. The discussion of alternatives is very welcome — they tend not to be covered in many for-the-layman books; certainly not some many alternatives. As for his description of Strings: Despite superficial attempts to be fair, Smolin does not leave the reader with much confidence in them. (And, you have to say, he does stack the deck somewhat in his historical and philosophical discussions.)
Finally, the book ends with a discussion of the philosophy and character of science. Obviously, given my focus in this blog, this was a section I particularly looked forward to. Strangely then, when I got to it I didn’t manage to maintain the enthusiasm I’d had up to that point. Not that I didn’t enjoy it & there weren’t interesting ideas, but perhaps they didn’t quite match the radicalness that marked the physics discussions.
But, overall, a very enjoyable read. The discussion of Strings is illuminating and the arguments for diversity are provoking.
Over the next few posts, I’m going to pull out some random quotes that fit with discussions here (in one way or another). These are not particularly representative of the book as a whole, but are thiings that caught my interest…
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