A quick update:
- There was a second installment of the discussion led by George Johnson about press coverage of string theory. He went back to look to see what exactly some of those early articles said… How much coverage was there to start with? When did it start? When did it begin get out of hand? Did it get out of hand? Is this all just part of a standard bubble that happens for any field that the press decides to cover, a sort of manufactured (my word not his) boom and bust cycle? All issues that were touched upon in the discussion. Note also that the discussion broadens out considerably -as it should, (finally!)- to talk about the broader issue of coverage of topics in physics and science in general. The positive and negative effects of press coverage on attracting the next generation of students was also discussed. The discussion (this aspect in particular) was especially interesting because of the remarks by a number of senior people in the audience who were able to talk about their experiences over the years having seen the cycles recruitment of students in their own departments. Worth a listen/look at the archive here.
- Lee Smolin has written a “Dear Friends” letter in response to some of the things that have been pointed out about his book, and about other points he’s made publicly in various discussions*. He’s given over some time to write quite a bit, which in general is a good thing to have done. You can find it here.
I’ll leave it to you to form your own opinion about Smolin’s remarks (I’ve not had time to read it in detail yet), and start a discussion here. Maybe ask him some followup questions here, for example. To help with context and build a more complete picture, do read some of the earlier comments and discussions involving him -and questions put directly to him- on the threads that share the name of this post. (e.g., Here and here.) Put those alongside the discussion with Peter Woit and of the central thesis of Woit’s book too. They are inseparable.
My set of opinions on the issue is the same as it was before. Even though I’ve said it all so many times here, since blogs seem to have no memory, I will summarize a bit:
- The bulk of the discussion is media hype, ironically, knowingly (in my humble opinion) exploited by the authors. I think this is harmful for the whole field of theoretical physics in this area. Once you take out the short term financial gain on the part of the authors and publishers, it does not help anyone. I don’t see how adding hype to hype combats hype. I’d really like someone to explain that to me.
- The picture of research into string theory that they paint -and then attack- is an unfair charaicature, my main criticism being that they’ve overblown the focus, and virtually totally ignored a lot of valuable work that is being pursued by a rather large portion of the field -it does not fit very well with the negative picture that they are trying to draw, you see, so best leave it out.
- They want to say that the discussion is really about the young people. They are being pressured and duped into working only on string theory, which they are sure (without offers of actual proof) will not succeed in saying anything about Nature. So they want to have a discussion about the distribution of resources. Very noble cause indeed, but carried out in the most manifestly ignoble way…. Why hide this admittedly interesting and valuable discussion inside the shell of a mischariacature and negative attack on the work of a huge number of people (including, for example in the case of Smolin, effectively ignoring and sidelining as essentially unimportant or irrelevant the valuable work of your colleague down the hall at the Perimeter Institute (see the exchange around here)), when the discussion is just not about string theory? The discussion is about the larger structure of academic careers and research priorities. If they really want to talk about that, why not write their books about that?
- Perhaps most importantly of all. If they want people to work on alternative ideas, why not present these ideas to everyone – develop these research programs to the point where people will work on them because they can see their merits? Theoretical physicists will work on the best or most promising tools out there that will do the job. We’re fickle. We don’t care whether they are loops, strings, or whatever. Just that they get the job done. Show us something more promising than string theory and we’ll drop string theory like a hot ton of bricks and work on that. So, Smolin and Woit: Please do some research that will help us get the job done by providing us with real alternatives through the usual channels which are available to everybody. The job won’t get done in the media-assisted way you are doing it right now.
-cvj
(*Thanks Bee!)
Some Related Asymptotia Posts (not exhaustive):
“… his argument asserting not only that string theory definitely failed, but even that it caused the failure of physics and science as a whole.” – Gina
Neither Smolin nor Woit say that; Woit merely suggests that the landscape due to the 6-d Calabi-Yau manifold needed to compress 6-dimensions of superstring theory makes the future dismal. With a vast number of solutions possible it just isn’t falsifiable physics and there is no evidence that string theory is really getting closer to being falsifiable. Woit doesn’t say this is a complete failure of all conceivable types of stringy theory. He focusses on the mainstream idea of 10-d superstrings with boson-fermion supersymmetry. Tony Smith is a regular commentator on Woit’s blog who claims to have a way of getting 26-d bosonic string theory to do useful things. Danny Ross Lunsford has a 6-d unification which I find more interesting. Woit has written that if there is any way of getting string to work, he’s interested in that.
If you look at the problem from the bottom, and ask what is a photon or what is a spinning quark core (ignoring the major modifications due to the vacuum loops around the core), vibrating string is the most simple explanation. By ‘electric charge’ people only mean ‘electromagnetic field’ and so all you have for an electron is what you observe, and then the mass isn’t a direct property but is provided by the vacuum. So the electron is just an electric monopole and magnetic dipole. You get that from a trapped electromagnetic energy current, like a photon trapped by gravity (which deflects photons), see Electronics World, Apr 03. A photon lacks thickness; it only has a transverse extent due its oscillations. So it’s just like a oscillating zero width open string.
Moveon: “So what are you complaining about? How can one possibly claim that
alternatives are not being explored?”
You actually prove my point. What you are calling “alternatives” are just ordinary lines of thinking that
are not so different from the mainstream. We have come to a point where anything that is not
string theory is considered to be alternative. That’s like almost all astrophysicist working on
neutralino dark matter, and a minority on axion dark matter. The axion people would then
considered to be working on alternative models. Saying hat dark matter may not exist at all would
be considered to be so outlandish that no one would take that serious. Fortunately this is not
the case.
In theoretical physics we are searching for the fundamental laws of nature. This requires that
that the fundamental principles that we know about are not taken for granted. The Planck scale
is so far removed from what we can observe that it is not reasonable to only look into
scenarios where, say, quantum mechanics is still valid
The problem that people off the mainstream stringy M-theory bandwagon don’t have an audience for their music, or that they are using the wrong (non-string) instruments, is not restricted to physics.
One good analogy is that mainstream medicine is sometimes off course. The resolution of such crises doesn’t usually come about through criticism of the mainstream, but by new ideas. The question is, how much obstruction to new ideas is taken as mere defensiveness against crackpottery? It’s very easy to ignore new ideas. The Nobel laureate, Barry Marshall, who discovered that Helicobacter pylori in all duodenal ulcers (contrary to mainstream ideas about stress causing ulcers) took it himself to demonstrate that it can cause ulcers. Still he was generally ignored from 1984-97.
Contrary to the popularist description of science as entirely rational and self-doubting, it’s extremely obvious that people’s status matters more than facts or evidence. Peer review decides what publications you get, whether you’re allowed to take a research degree in a given area, and those peers will only understand you if you’re working from the existing paradigms; otherwise, sorry, they are too busy for ‘pet ideas.’
Well, I would consider eg Connes’ recent work as an alternative in spirit (while not in achievements); or is this still not different enough because it uses mainstream QFT? How “different” would then be sufficient for your taste?
As if being different to the mainstream would be a virtue in itself….well, there is this tiny little extra requirement, namely that any alternative ought to make also some sense. It is easy to say “look for alternatives”, but actually quite a bit harder to come up with something else that makes any sense at all. So far, a viable alternative to the general framework that string theory provides, is not in sight. Everyone who believes otherwise, is warmly invited to prove his position and contribute a breakthrough.
I am sure that when a new idea that makes good sense would come up,
it would be immediately explored by a lot of people. An example
is Maldacena’s conjecture: At first sight, the AdS/CFT duality may
have seemed absurd to many, because it was such a radical postulate.
But soon people realized that it did makes sense, and that it
“works”, despite having a rigorous proof for it. This shows that
a young person, being not one of the established elder statesmen,
can make a breakthrough once he gets a good idea, and become widely
appreciated.
But I guess does this example does not count because it has been a breakthrough in a discredited field?
A position commonly found in public discussions, is that any new idea that is enough different, or even in opposition, to an established theory, would be morally “better”. But practically all such new ideas of laymen are really just simply nonsense. It is like claiming, for example, that my new “alternative Mars rocket made out from wood” would be better than a Saturn V, and going on at length about how the “establishment” would “oppress” my great idea. This appears as obvious nonsense to almost everybody, except perhaps to small kids and some desert tribes. As for alternatives to fundamental theories, the situation is analogous but unfortunately not as easily recognized by most.
So far, a viable alternative to the general framework that string theory provides, is not in sight. Everyone who believes otherwise, is warmly invited to prove his position and contribute a breakthrough.
Try this: It is a trivial observation, made in math-ph/0603024, that Laurent polynomial gauge invariance is incompatible with nonzero charge. You have to settle for gauge covariance, and unitarity then requires a gauge anomaly.
A simple example is the bosonic string. Conformal gauge invariance requires D=26, and in that case the corresponding charge L_0 = 0. If you want the charge L_0 to be nonzero, you need a conformal gauge anomaly. It work the same way for other gauge symmetries, the important thing is that you allow Laurent polynomials, or more generally a two-sided grading.
Since the relevant kinds of gauge and diff anomalies do not show up in string theory (nor in field theory for that matter), it is not the correct description of charged systems on a genuinely quantum level. The missing ingredient is that one must introduce and quantize the observer’s trajectory in spacetime together with the fields. This is important, because the relevant cocycles in the multi-dimensional Virasoro and affine algebras are functionals of this trajectory, cf e.g. math-ph/9810003.
“… It is like claiming, for example, that my new “alternative Mars rocket made out from wood†would be better than a Saturn V, and going on at length about how the “establishment†would “oppress†my great idea. This appears as obvious nonsense to almost everybody, except perhaps to small kids and some desert tribes.” – Moveon
Strawman argument about “obvious nonsense”. Try choosing something that is censored as “obvious nonsense” without anyone even having read it or said what is wrong with it.
By the way, as a kid I used to launch wood and cardboard model rockets and they went higher than metal ones. Wood’s a good material. Provide some calculation to prove it’s definitely better to use metal for rockets! Wooden rockets were used for a long time before metal ones. The latest technology in engineering and maths is not the best just because its the newest. That’s just as much a logical fallacy as ad hominem arguments.
The wooden rocket comment of Moveon, and nc’s unexpected* response to it, wil keep me laughing all day!
-cvj
(*on second thought…. I should have seen it coming…
)
are we sure that approximating real rockets with toy wooden rockets is more funny than approximating the real quark-gluon plasma with a toy AdS/QCD?
“Toy rocket”? Sigh… M, metal has a massive expansion coefficient and also massive conductivity compared to wood, this ruptures seals and joints when it gets too hot, and metal alloys also lose strength with temperature. Wood is 25 times weaker than steel at low temperature, but is stronger and safer at the high temperatures; it just ablates slightly. It wouldn’t burn in space. It wouldn’t even burn while travelling at supersonic speed upwards through the atmosphere. It take a long time to heat up, unlike metal. When exposed to flash heat, a thin layer of surface chars and the carbonated surface protects the underlying wood, like a “smart” material. (It takes a lot of time and oxygen to burn it. No need for expensive and defective tiles which fall off the shuttle, etc.)
I meant “carbonized”, not carbonated
Note that the Hughes H-4 Hercules was critiquised in the basis of lack of power, not in the basis of metal vs wood. Check also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_Goose .
According E. Schatzberg in Technology and Culture, Vol. 35, No. 1. (Jan., 1994), pp. 34-69., the last operational wood fighting plane was the british Mosquito, during the WWII. Schatzberg article is sort of heavy, but it seems a good introduction to the social aspects of the debate wood/metal during the 1930.
Clifford, string theory is like a business in the sense there are people making important decisions who are not experts on the technical details. This occurs with funding, it occurs as you go up the hierarchy at universities, and it occurs in the media. Businesses can have stockholders, executives, and the media to satisfy as well (Peter by the way with his blog and book is media-like not CEO-like). Time limits don’t have to be used to give up totally on something but they can be used as an indicator that maybe more people need to look at more things. The more things can be old ideas that were not looked at good enough. Two of my examples fit in this category (E6 GUT and bosonic M-theory). You say people are free to work on what they want to work on. Sometimes though an idea, no matter how good it is, needs championed in order to get off the ground. Perhaps those in position to champion ideas, need to champion more ideas instead of just their current favorite ideas.
John G. Thanks. But perhaps you should find out how the system actually works instead of how you imagine that it works.
Despite what you are told, people do look at other ideas. People do champion ideas other than their current favourites, and more and more people are looking at more and more things everyday in the field.
Best,
-cvj
Hi Clifford, it’s not the lack of championing that makes my blood pressure go off scale, it’s active censorship that’s the problem! As a specific example, would you have the nerve to ask Jacques if he agreed with the deletion of Lunsford’s published paper from arXiv in 2004? It was published in Int. J. Theor. Phys. 43 (2004) no. 1, pp.161-177 and a non-updatable copy is at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/688763 (I know it’s non-updatable because I’ve got a paper on CERN -EXT series which also can’t be updated except via carbon-copy by updating a paper on arXiv, which bans non-mainstream things). Lunsford states:
‘I certainly know from experience that … point about the behavior of the gatekeepers is true – I worked out and published an idea that reproduces GR as low-order limit, but, since it is crazy enough to regard the long range forces as somehow deriving from the same source, it was blacklisted from arxiv (CERN however put it up right away without complaint).’
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=128#comment-1932
nc:- There’s censorship, and there is filtering to keep signal-to-noise at a manageable level. You are entitled to your opinion about where to draw the line. I do not know which is which here and will certainly not get into it. (Btw, I ask and tell Jacques whatever I please, and he does so to me. I don’t understand what “nerve” has to do with anything when discussing science with a sensible colleague.) I’m not going to start discussing individual cases here. This is not intended to be a forum for random grievances about one’s pet theories, be they brilliiant revolutions in the making from visionaries or total nonsense from well-meaning nutcases.
Or, come to think of it, be they brilliant revolutions in the making from well-meaning nutcases, or total nonsense from visionaries.
Either way, this is not the place for it.
-cvj
Before I continue the elaboration on the 16 points I raised (Remark 139) regarding Lee’s book, let me mention where were we. The points were roughly divided to five parts.
A) the evaluation of string theory. These were points 1-5. Point 3 that I discussed first (143) was about finiteness and the work of Mandelstam. Lee responded in (149) and there were many follow ups. Points 4 and 5 (Maldacena conjectures) were raised in (160, 161) and Lee commented on them in (169).
Points 1 and 2 regarding Lee’s overall evaluation of progress in physics in the last quarter of a century are linked in (205)-first link. (Masterclass (18))
B) The matter of pluralism in theoretical physics. My comments (Points 6-8) (pluralism should be studied in a wider context; traditional areas of hep-ph; there is no scientific reason for a unified quantum gravity community) are linked in (205)- second link (masterclass (19)). (Moveon referred to point 7 in (207))
C) The string theory community. Point 9 was presented in (206).
D) Sociology: Point 15 was made in (166) to which Lee responded in (170). The other points on this matter will be addressed next.
E) Philosophy of science, scientific revolutions, and high-risk scientific endeavors. Point 12 (encouraging young scientists to high-risk endeavors) was discussed here in (167) and Lee responded in (170). Point 13 (Attitude towards revolutionary theories by great scientists,) was discussed in (288). (Count referred to it in (291).) The last point 16 (scientific revolutions) will be elaborated last.
Note that for the topics in B), D) and E) string theory is merely an example and, as Clifford said in his original post, this is a place where the natural context of the discussion is much broader. (Which is, in my opinion, quite welcomed.)
I have to make one retraction. I suggested to call a physics theoretical proof just “mathematical evidence” because of their non-definite and somewhat subjective nature. However, mathematicians I talked with told me that also in mathematics while a (correct) proof gives a definite validation of the statement it proves, it does not lead to a definite understanding of the mathematical phenomenon behind the statement. In this respect, the value of a proof is still somewhat subjective. So, in mathematics, as in physics, the more and better proofs the merrier. Probably, no need for different terminology, after all.
Hi Clifford, thank you for acknowledging that there is censorship due to mainstream ideas which lack evidence, and for acknowledging that where the line should be drawn isn’t defined by scientific criteria, but is just a matter of personal opinions. That makes it all fine.
You’re quite welcome. Even though I did not say those things.
-cvj
Hi Clifford, well I saw what I took to be an acknowledgement from you that censorship of non-mainstream ideas occurs, and you stated that it is a matter for my opinion if that is reasonable or not. Such a point of view is vague on what is right and what is wrong. If I completely misunderstand you, it’s not due to your any problem in your lucidity, instead it’s my stupidity, lack of appreciation for string theory, etc. Similarly, if something gets deleted without even being read (within a few seconds) by mainstream, that’s good noise reduction policy. If their idea is any good, it will be taken seriously by someone who will be in a position to defend it. Excellent.
NC,
I do not think that you really refer to censorship. The rejection of Woit’s book from CUP was not an act of censorship but entirely reasonable (see comment (132)) and the book appeared elsewhere where it was appropriate. I suspect that the rejection of your ideas from PRL was very reasonable and I hope somebody, beyond the line of duty, will take the effort to look at them and tell you (better, on the record in a blog, maybe here) why they can’t work. But your ideas are presented on your homepage and weblog so everybody can read them.
Dear gina,
“I hope somebody, beyond the line of duty, will take the effort to look at them and tell you (better, on the record in a blog, maybe here) why they can’t work.”
Sigh. Love the scientific objectivity and lack of prejudice about whether ‘my’ ideas will be found useless! Very unbiased. It’s deliberately built like a jigsaw of pieces from empirically defensible fact, due to other people. I didn’t discover spacetime, Newton’s 3rd law, big bang, etc. Put a jigsaw together from facts nobody disputes, and the sum of those facts is absurd because it correctly predicts gravity, cosmology (no retardation of supernovae, predicted ahead of observations and published in 1996), so they do work.
The investigation of ‘pet theories’ outer than those of mainstream awaits the fall of mainstream theory. Naturally that can’t fall because it isn’t falsifiable. It’s not a blog you need to compete with arXiv’s hyping of string theory, it’s a vast number of cited publications:
‘Scientists have thick skins. They do not abandon a theory merely because facts contradict it. … History of science, of course, is full of accounts of how crucial experiments allegedly killed theories. But such accounts are fabricated long after the theory had been abandoned. … What really count are dramatic, unexpected, stunning predictions: a few of them are enough to tilt the balance; where theory lags behind the facts, we are dealing with miserable degenerating research programmes. Now, how do scientific revolutions come about? If we have two rival research programmes, and one is progressing while the other is degenerating, scientists tend to join the progressive programme. This is the rationale of scientific revolutions. … Criticism is not a Popperian quick kill, by refutation. Important criticism is always constructive: there is no refutation without a better theory. Kuhn is wrong in thinking that scientific revolutions are sudden, irrational changes in vision. The history of science refutes both Popper and Kuhn: on close inspection both Popperian crucial experiments and Kuhnian revolutions turn out to be myths: what normally happens is that progressive research programmes replace degenerating ones.’
– Imre Lakatos, Science and Pseudo-Science, pages 96-102 of Godfrey Vesey (editor), Philosophy in the Open, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1974.
D) Sociology/ social science aspects
Before getting into specific points let me make some general remarks about this issue and introduce some useful notions. Let me briefly talk about “goals”, “opportunity costs”, “incentives”, and the tension between rationality of actions and rationality of rules.
1. Goals . I think the vague term “progress in science” can represent the goal which is the basis of discussion, or even more specifically “progress towards answering the fundamental problems of physics” (ignoring my point 7) or “progress towards a sound and correct theory of quantum gravity”. Of course, when it comes to universities, and other academic frameworks/communities, teaching and scholarship are also important goals, and there are others.
2. Opportunity cost. Perhaps the most relevant notion from economics and social science to quite a few aspects of the discussion is that of opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost, is the cost of something in terms of an opportunity forgone (and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity) (Wikipedia)
The whole discussion is to a large extent about opportunity cost. It is not whether it is good to have research in string theory but whether the human, financial and other resources can be better used.
We can practice this notion on two little examples from Lee’s book. Lee mentioned the complaint of string theorist not getting interested quickly enough in “non commutative geometry”. Of course, it is good for string theorists to know and try to use every piece of mathematics (and they come amazingly close). But the “opportunity cost” approach would be: perhaps rather than climbing further on the mountains of Geometry towards the very very new theory of “non commutative geometry”, it is better for string theorists to pay more attention to the large fruitful valleys of Analysis or the mysterious hills of Stochastics, (or Mathematical Logic, or higher Category Theory?…)
Another example is Lee’s suggestion to teach freshmen quantum mechanics which is mentioned in several places in the book. Again, the question is not if this is a good idea that freshmen will know quantum mechanics, but what is the “opportunity cost”.
(While for the fate of string theory, I think we simply do not have enough evidence to call, so I would advice simply to wait several decades, this little question of teaching quantum mechanics in first year university physics, is probably very suitable for a weblog discussion.)
3. Incentives . This is a famous notion. An incentive (again, as Wikipedia tells us) is a name for any factor that provides a motive for a particular course of action.
A little example to practice. Lee compares “peer review” to “jury of one’s peer”:
“This is called peer review. It’s a funny name, because it differs markedly from the notion of jury of one’s peer, which suggests that you are being judged by people just like yourself, who are presumably fair and objective. There are real penalties – prison – juror who conceal a bias”
This is simple example of an incentive: Prison for jurors who conceal a bias provides a strong motive not to conceal a bias. (I suppose a change in this direction in the universities would be truly horrifying.
E.g., To “punish” people who “shamelessly slant” their recommendation letters, will give a strong incentive not to write letters at all.)
4. The tension between rationality of actions and rationality of rules. The distinction between rationality of actions and rationality of rules is a familiar but not an entirely standard notion. The basic idea (at least in special cases) is well known under different names. (e.g., “precedences” in law.)
Let’s start with one example regarding to quantum mechanics course for freshmen.
While in Yale Lee’s suggestion for first year quantum mechanics course was rejected by his conservative colleagues, in Harvard the story was different. The dean in Harvard rejected Lee’s initiative out-of-hand without considering its merits because the proposal did not pass through the requisite committees. “‘If we let every teach what they wanted to’ he said ‘we would have educational chaos’”.
The dean followed the rule of not allowing and not even considering teaching initiative without the appropriate standard approval procedure. The dean’s rationale for this rule was the goal to prevent educational chaos. This indeed appears to be a rational point of view.
(Lee argues also against the Harvard dean’s goal, and says: “I am not sure that educational chaos is such a bad idea”. Being aware that siding with a dean is never popular and can be a bad mistake, my opinion is nevertheless that educational chaos is a very bad idea.)
Here is another example of the tension between rationality of actions and rationality of rules: Our nc mentioned the long time it took the scientific community to accept the discovery of the bacteria leading to ulcers. Again conservatism may have led, in this particular case, to some delay in recognizing an important discovery (even to a loss of lives), but overall, as a rule, the conservative and careful approaches in science, and certainly in modern medicine, are very rational.
The last example is also from Lee’s book. This is a rare issue where Lee presents a conservative rather than a radical point of view and it is regarding what Lee calls the “ethics of science”. In short, Lee’s point is that even if you belong to a large dominant group in some field the tradition/rule/ethics of science require that you will support also research in competing directions that you regard unpromising or even very unpromising. This argument can also be seen as an example of the tension between rationality of rules and rationality of specific actions.
D) Sociology/ social science aspects. Let me move on to the specific points on part D. (See (316) for where the other points are.)
11. Although a substantial part of Lee’s argument is about sociology there appears to be no real interactions with social scientists.
It could have served the quality of the discussion of sociology if it reflected some discussion or interaction with social scientists. Beside the difficulties in the overall discussion which was my point 15, and the emotional rather than rational discussion, some of Lee’s specific suggestions that can look good at first, are problematic when analyzed carefully. And these problems may be quite familiar to savvy social scientists.
14. Lee’s ideas on revolutionizing universities is not detailed and the hints we get are not promising.
I will consider one example. Suppose that you want to improve the difficult academic careers of what Lee calls “seers” and I prefer to call “dreamers” – people who are involved in very high risk individual original projects. As I said, the main problem is that most of these researchers will fail: If you have 50 scientists working on different approaches for replacement of quantum mechanics, I tend to think that they will all fail to achieve a “real progress”. But even Lee may agree that 49 will fail. Of course, a few of the failed ideas may still lead to useful scientific insights but many of these people will not have anything to show for their efforts.
But let us put that aside, agree that “seers’” academic life should be improved, and consider Lee’s specific suggestion for a 5 year support (with an option to up to 10 years extension). Will this make the situation better for the seers?
Carefully analyzed it appears that most likely it will make it worse! (Lets assume that in these 5-15 years they will get conditions comparable to those in universities.)
The chance of people who work in high-risk projects of the kind Lee encourage to be admitted to a university after 5 years of failure or after 10-15 years of very partial success are very small. Given this, the really brilliant high-risk individuals will try to get a university position anyway, so the quality of people left in Lee’s project will be lower. Moreover, these people will have strong incentive to try to be engaged in “normal” research to increase the their chances for a university position.
Moreover, this program will give a negative incentives for universities to hire “seers” in the first round; they will prefer to wait and hire successful “seers” coming out from Lee’s program later in their careers.
At the end, you may reach a situation where “seers/dreamers” will have even more difficult careers than today and the dreamers-support plan will be just a program for second-rate physicists who cannot get ordinary academic jobs.
Again, there is nothing special here about “seers” in physics. This is a classical case of “affirmative action”, and the insight that separate (terminal) frameworks for “affirmative action” are inferior to affirmative action within the ordinary framework (universities in this case).
What could be a better way to support seers (or dreamers)? There is no way around convincing the academic community (or even even part of the community) either in the general principle of the importance of “seers” or regarding specific individuals.
You want to promote seers? This is what you should do: Identify some brilliant young people who do good, highly original, foundational work, against all advice: differentiate between them, identify the better ones and try to support them in the ordinary university frameworks. Help them to get academic positions, spend time in following and criticizing what they are doing; and when they come up for tenure write a detailed recommendation letter, which tells about the candidate and not about the writer, and if they deserve tenure, give them a break: slant it a little, shamelessly.
10. Talking together about the scientific and social issues including funding is by itself very problematic. Not being sufficiently aware of this difficulty is a mistake.
Personally, I enjoy the many aspects of the debate. But I do not think Lee is careful enough to separate the scientific and non-scientific issues and he is not aware of the difficulties arising from such a mixture. Several of the phenomena Lee referred to as sociological are purely scientific, e.g. I do not see a justification to consider the issue of finiteness of string theory as a sociological issue.
Of course, there are relations between the scientific and sociological aspects, but you better try to understand matters very well separately (each one in the correct wider context) before you try to relate them. (Where can we find an example? Here is one: it takes quite a good understanding of quantum mechanics and gravitation separately before an attempt to study them together makes sense.)
Lee’s own interests as a prominent representative of LQG can also cause a difficulty in interpretation of what he says. The not careful mixture of so many issues and ideas, opens the door to the interpretation that on every issue, scientific, social, ethical or philosophical, you can regard Lee’s position as driven by the interest to get more resources for LQG. I do not share this extreme interpretation and I regard as unfair, but the difficulty it expresses is genuine.
To sum, the mixture, even within individual chapters, of social and scientific issues on the expense of studying each issue in the more general natural context, added to Lee’s own biases and interests, obscure Lee’s argument and reduce its quality.
OK, from my 16 points, 15 down and one more to go, and a juicy one indeed (scientific revolutions).
‘The dean followed the rule of not allowing and not even considering teaching initiative without the appropriate standard approval procedure. The dean’s rationale for this rule was the goal to prevent educational chaos. This indeed appears to be a rational point of view.’ – Gina, comment 323
Similarly, Galileo would have caused chaos if the more rational professors had allowed consideration of his radical, disruptive new approach to astronomy (using a telescope):
‘Here at Padua is the principal professor of philosophy whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? What shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! And to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa labouring before the Grand Duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the sky.’ – Letter of Galileo to Kepler, 1610, http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0043.html
1. Morgenbesser (1921-2004)
“Brother, can you spare a paradigm? –” Sidney Morgenbesser.
E. Philosophy
My last point was:
16. Lees says that science clearly calls for a revolution. Maybe the opposite is true. Lee says that science is now more conservative (anti revolutions) than ever. This is incorrect. The whole revolution terminology is crooked.
(For the earlier points see comments (323 324) and pointers in (316).)
This point is mainly a philosophical disagreement I have with Lee (and others) and it also reflects on practical matters.
2. Philosophy of science
We often see attempts in the debate about string theory to apply insights from philosophy of science, whether it is the Popperian notion of falsifiability, or the earlier statistically-based notions of verification (like the Bayesian notion), to derive definite conclusions concerning various aspects of the debate. Lee’s strong reliance on Kuhn’s philosophy of science is also in this spirit.
While interesting, all these attempts have a limited potential. We have to remember that all the philosophy of science theories that I mentioned, as others, have very partial descriptive and normative value. Rather than giving clear normative rules how science should be done or a clear description how science have been done, philosophy of science is important to understand what science is, and to introduce language and tools to talk academically and scientifically about science.
3. Kuhn
The notion of scientific revolutions was coined by Kuhn. So just to be sure when I am in disagreement with Lee and when I am disagreeing with Kuhn, I did take the trouble to read Kuhn’s book, (
). One interesting thing I discovered is Kuhn’s description of how Newtonian physics(!) had been suffering for centuries from problems that resemble the problems of string theory today: lack of experimental conformation, and worse, evidence that appeared to be in conflict with the theory.
The “technical” terms coined by Kuhn of paradigms and periods of normal science and of paradigm-shift were both highly influential and highly controversial on their own. But the metaphor of “revolutions” was what capture the imagination the most. This was a great metaphor. The term “phase transition” or simply “transition” could capture Kuhn’s theory better than “revolution” and as a physicists he was surely aware of these terms, but “scientific revolutions” was a great brand-name which overshadowed everything else. Kuhn’s notion of a revolution is not a myth as nc said but a metaphor, and a great metaphor indeed.
Kuhn agrees (but not some of his followers) that the notion of scientific progress is real and that the ultimate goal is progress. One trouble with the revolution idea is that for some people (especially men ?) revolutions are more appealing than progress, and are becoming the goal rather than a mean. One reason may be that progress is not easy to define or to agree upon. But surely the main reason is that a revolution is a great excitement.
Even if we accept the notion of a revolution, another problem which is very explicit in Lee’s writing but also already presented in Kuhn’s book is the tendency to automatically identify highlights of scientific progress (and other human activities) with revolutions.
Does Mozart’s music reflects a revolution? In my opinion it is not, and it is silly to regard it as such, in spite being a highlight of human achievement.
4. The high-energy physics’ revolutions.
Let’s look at some prominent “revolutions” in this debate. Is the “second string revolution” a revolution? There were five potential string theories studied. As can be fully expected, some unexpected relations between them were found. And then there was the nice idea and supporting works suggesting that all these 5 theories emerge in a larger 11-dimensional description of the universe. This solves some problems and leads to some others. In my opinion, while an important development, it is not a revolution by any stretch of the imagination.
But whose opinion counts? Actually, this is a point Kuhn himself discusses. Perhaps one of his statements that opened the path to “Kuhnism” and “relativism” to which he later objected, was his view that a revolution is in the eyes of the involved scientists and not the eyes of an objective observer.
Was the standard model a revolution? In an article criticizing Kuhn’s book Steven Weinberg claims it was not and on this point he appear to be right. Weinberg’s opinion as a major player in the making of the standard model should count even according to Kuhn.
Was string theory itself (or the “first superstring revolution”) a revolution? Maybe. It looks to me more like the non-revolutionary great progress as we see in music. Time will tell whether it is like Mozart, Chopin or Paganini.
5. Pulling off a revolution; Weinberg and Smolin
“More than any time in the history of science the cards are stacked against the revolutionary. such people are simply not tolerated in the research universities. Little wonder, then, that even when the science clearly calls for one, we can’t seem to pull off a revolution.” (Lee Smolin, TTWP p. 348)
It seems that the whole revolution rhetoric crooked the scientific agendas. Science clearly call for progress, also for some inner reflection about previous progress and about goals. Sure enough, some changes, even sharp changes and some backtracking are required. But the revolution spirit is obscure. One change “clearly” called for is to let the revolution idealization and rhetoric rest. (Not only in science.)
Kuhn metaphor was a great success and his book was an important landmark in philosophy and historiography of science. But taking his views too literally, either to attack them as Weinberg tries to do or, as Lee proposes, to implement them as practical road maps for science are both, in my opinion, bad ideas.
Weinberg’s instincts as a scientists are rather negative towards Kuhn’s and his different analysis of the physics developments that Kuhn based his book on, is very interesting. However, Weinberg’s interpreters Kuhn’s philosophy too literally and his critique is based on this interpretation. This makes his overall argument not so convincing as also his notions of “soft” and “hard” parts of physics; Notions that are even vaguer than the notions Kuhn himself introduced.
Lee interprets Kuhn’s ideas even more literally than Weinberg. Rather than to criticize Kuhn, Lee uses his interpretation of Kuhn as a basis for his ideas how science should be practiced. This leads to his distinction between “seers” and “craftspersons” and to his whole discussion how to encourage and pull off revolutions. The idea of practically basing scientific practices on philosophy of science is misguided, and Lee’s specific suggestions, while bold and interesting, make little sense.
Happy 2007, everybody!