Thanks for the link Nigel.

-cvj

But the fascinating part of the book is the sociology. If one wishes to understand how sturdy (or flimsy) the foundations of physics are, one must understand how scientific consensus comes about.

The book may be long, but it is easy reading. A minor complaint is that it lightly follows the academic tendency towards repitition. I found myself skimming some of the later chapters.

A gravity wave physicist would probably find the recent books by Smolin and Woit an interesting discussion of the sociology of particle physics, but would find this book by Collins to be too much tilted against whatever version of reality he believes. Similarly, because of the extra emotional distance, the Collins book is a good read for particle theorists interested in the sociology of physics.

Collins’ material is largely derived from interviews with scientists, and he does not refrain from chronicling disagreements and failures. I’ve come to gravitational waves relatively recently compared to the time scale covered in this book, but from what I’ve been able to learn from my own observations and by asking my more senior colleagues, it seems that Collins is mostly accurate, although he may be annoying to some at times; he also has a tendency to verbosity.

As Collins himself writes on his homepage, “[This book] is primarily designed to be read by scientists involved in the search for gravitational radiation who are curious about the outsider who spends so much time spying on them.” And indeed, it provided me with a very readable introduction to the social science of… science, as it is done on the field.

‘Einstein submitted this research to the Physical Review under the title “Do Gravitational Waves Exist?” with Rosen as coauthor. Although the original version of the paper no longer exists, Einstein’s answer to the title question, to judge from his letter to Born, was “No.” It is remarkable that at this stage in his career Einstein was prepared to believe that gravitational waves did not exist, but he also managed to convince his new assistant, Leopold Infeld, who replaced Rosen in 1936, that his argument was valid…

‘But not everyone was so easily convinced. The Physical Review received Einstein’s submission on 1 June 1936, according to the journal’s logbook. Tate returned the manuscript to Einstein on 23 July with a critical review and the mild request that he “would be glad to have [Einstein's] reaction to the various comments and criticisms the referee has made.” Einstein wrote back on 27 July in high dudgeon, withdrawing the paper and dismissing out of hand the referee’s comments…’

- http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-9/p43.html

I should have guessed that you – a professional musician- would like the title!

-cvj