Mathematician David Goss wrote to tell me about the latest issue of the journal Current Science, which contains quite a few articles on Einstein’s legacy, including an interesting one on Einstein and the search for unification by physicist David Gross. Perhaps I’m being a bit churlish, but surely I’m not the only person who is at least a bit happy that 2005 is over and done with, so that attention can begin to be paid to some other topic than that of Einstein. He was a true giant, but I bet he’d be pretty tired of the hoopla by now.
Gross discusses Einstein’s goal of finding simple universal laws from which all physics can be deduced, and tells about how this inspired him at the age of thirteen to decide to become a theoretical physicist. He tells about Einstein’s failed attempts to find particle-like solutions to the non-linear equations of GR, unified in various ways with electromagnetism, and notes that in the early 80s, with Malcolm Perry, he found magnetic monopole solutions that were a bit like what Einstein was looking for.
Getting to topics of current interest, Gross talks about “The discovery of supersymmetry, which we all hope and some expect in a few years from now at the Large Hadron Collider…” I don’t think I’m the only one hoping not for this, but for something more interesting. I’d also be curious whether Gross puts himself among those who “expect” to see this at the LHC. There’s the usual string theory propaganda, including the incorrect claim that string theory provides “a consistent and finite quantum theory of gravity” (no, the sum of the perturbation series is not finite, and Gross is one who often says we don’t know what the theory even is). Gross also as usual stresses that he thinks we need to give up on space and time, but doesn’t know what will replace them. He concludes that Einstein was wrong to refuse to accept quantum mechanics and to ignore nuclear and particle physics, but that he was right to try and unify gravity with the other forces, saying “this we know today is the central issue in fundamental physics”, something I don’t really agree with (I’d go for understanding electroweak symmetry breaking).
This issue of the journal also contains interesting articles by Michael Atiyah on Einstein and Geometry, and by Abhay Ashtekar on The winding road to quantum gravity. There’s also a completely uncritical piece of string theory propaganda by Ashoke Sen entitled String theory and Einstein’s dream that could easily have been written ten years ago.
For more uncritical promotional material on string theory, here are two things from UC Davis. They have something there called the “High Energy Frontier Theory Initiative (HEFTI)”, and on their website you can read a report written by an external committee for the Dean at Davis promoting the idea of hiring more string/brane theorists of the phenomenological sort. The report is a few years old, but shows exactly what the consensus thinking of just about the entire high energy theory community has been for the past few years about what is the hot area to hire in. They promote the idea that particle theory is doing extremely well, so much so that
The last period of comparable experimental and theoretical ferment occurred in the early 1970s, swiftly culminating in the development of the Standard Model of particle physics.
and that the “pace of new developments is accelerating” in both theory and experiment.
Also from UC Davis is a new paper entitled Space and time from translation symmetry by Albert Schwarz. It starts off by claiming “In some sense string theory today is in very good shape”, but seems to be empty of content.
Finally, there’s a new paper out tonight reviewing the status of the string theory Landscape. It looks like landscapeologists are now ready to abandon even the idea that the number of phenomenologically viable vacua is finite, and the last part of the paper contains some impressive contortions about why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They also seem to have given up on Douglas’s idea of making predictions by counting vacua. They’re still counting the vacua, but now the reason given is not to make predictions, but to see if there are enough to be sure that one of them will reproduce the standard model.
I hope that when putting the world together, God had more imagination than to attach a superparticle to every particle, then push it to very high energies.
“… He concludes that Einstein was wrong to refuse to accept quantum mechanics and to ignore nuclear and particle physics,…”
I don’t this well represents the concerns Einstein was expressing. It is possible to accept the mathematics of quantum mechanics and particle physics as being a useful working approximation without religiously proclaiming that it is infallible.
Einstein’s reservations were not directed towards the validated empirical equations of QM, but towards Bohr’s brainwashing philosophies which sweep inconsistencies between classical and quantum theories under the carpet.
It is not good science to invent philosophies that make questioning look heretical or silly (complementarity and correspondence principles), although it had to be done back in 1927 to overcome the charge that QM was incompatible with classical physics.
A bit of history,
Einstein was not the father of the idea of unification. This one of multiple miths. In fact, as historically proven, Hilbert already was working in an unified field theory before Einstein. In fact, Einstein contacted with Hilbert before the formulation of GR expressing his interest in Hilbert axiomatic unified field theory.
Einstein rejected QM as pure nonsense and wait that some alternative equations (e.g. somewhat in the spirit of Bohmian mechanics) could REPLACE Schrodinger one. Einstein become a member of continuum guys, whereas Heisemberg, for example, was member of quantum school.
Einstein rejected the math of QM (as most of classical physicists who found repugant the new mathematical tools). Einstein durely critized Dirac formalism as a kind of ‘nonsense’ when was presented to him.
Einstein completely ignored nuclear physics advances since he waited that nuclear forces would be a kind of combination of EM + gravity. Somewhat as he waited that QM would be explained via some ‘modification’ of classical mechanics. He was not alone, some physicists (e.g. Stark) waited that a chemical bond could be explained via classical EM forces, for example.
In fact, when physicists said Einstein that via relativistic-QFT, they had obtained the highest precision in experimental predictions never seen, Einstein said “Bah that is not impressive for me”.
—
Juan R.
Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)
Juan,
OK, so Einstein had his own share of crackpotism…
@ anon :
Einstein’s crackpotism is excusable since he developped a correct theory of gravitation.
It was not a small endeavour, and even if he didn’t accept QM and Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics so what ?
It doesn’t diminish at all all the great discoveries he did : in statiscal mechanics, brownian motion, special and general relativity etc….
Einstein rejected QM as pure nonsense …
This is, to put it mildly, a gross overstatement. Also, to characterize Einstein’s views on quantum mechanics in the 1930s and later as crackpotism strikes me as ludicrously ahistorical and revisionist. (I suspect Anon was just throwing Juan R a bone.) Were his views in several respects wrong, or at least questionable and self-defeating? Undoubtedly, although they stimulated a level of critical examination of quantum mechanics that might not have occurred otherwise.
Before criticizing Einstein for his deeply held positions in the mid-20th century the current generation of physicists should consider how their own views might appear with the benefit of hindsight several decades from now.
From Richard Feynman:
(..via this site)
THE FEBRUARY NOTICES OF THE AMS ARE FULL OF DOO-DOO TOO.
THERE IS NO MATHEMATICAL CONTENT WHATSOEVER. THE INTERVIEW WITH LAX IS ODIOUS AND VILE. REMARKS LIKE “INCIDENTALLY, I HAVE A VERY GOOD MEMORY” ARE SELF-SERVING AND CRASS.
Dear QWERTY
to save me having to walk over to the math library, since i don’t have a subscription (not an AMS member), could you say very briefly what the articles are about that you are objecting to?
Based on impressions gathered in the 1970s I have a very high regard for Peter Lax. It would be amusing and surprising to find him guilty of making doo-doo with no mathematical content whatsoever, though less astonishing if he were merely odious crass and vile, since that is a familiar part of all our human makeup.
Anyway please be a little more specific for the edification of all us AMS non-members. Unless you are totally out to lunch, what are you talking about?
Qwerty and Who,
Peter Lax and the Feb. AMS notices is off-topic, discuss this elsewhere. The AMS site does require you to set up a web-account to access it, but I believe much of the content (like the Notices) can be accessed even if you are not an AMS member.
I stand corrected, Peter. I should never have inquired of QWERTY what in the world he was talking about (so pungently and with such feeling.)
Actually Einstein liked Dirac’s formalism, particularly when it was boosted into field theory. What he hated was vanilla quantum mechanics with no special relativity and the collapse principal, he felt that limit was very poorly defined.
People often say he was off on a island, yet very often great physicists would go to see him to talk about interpretational issues in QM (this years after Copenhagen was well entrenched) and he could still with the power of his mind alone convince them otherwise (see Bohm for instance).
Note, he was one of the first people to be supportive of the path integral approach, this near the end of his life when everyone was praising Schwingers methods
A bird once whispered in my ear that the Gross-Perry monopole solution was first found by Sorkin.
That’s a bird with a good memory. 1982? 1983?
“Einstein had his own share of crackpotism… ”
Geniuses and crackpots share an enormous amout of self-confidence that allow them to keep on following their ideas when everyone else tell them it’s a dead end. In fact I see two main differences : the first is that geniuses try to overcome the difficulties, where the crackpots generally just ignore them.
The second can be seen in what Feynman said :
“We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn’t any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.”
Crackpots can’t go through this cleaning process. Their ideas tend to remain muddy.
So what I would like to convey is this : someone is not a crackpot because he has this idea that sounds crazy, like Einstein’s ideas about QM or nuclear interactions, but because of his behaviour in case he is opposed to a counterargument or an empirical difficulty. Did Einstein push his own ideas against empirical evidence ? You can’t accuse him of crackpotism just because he felt the urge to follow his inner track, his “good passions”.
“We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals… to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. …” – Feynman
“Crackpots can’t go through this cleaning process. Their ideas tend to remain muddy….” – Fabien
So covering up errors en route to success is called “cleaning up”!
Anon, Ugo, Chris W, Haelfix, and Fabien Besnard,
Einstein rejected both quantum and probabilistic nature of QM and becomed a member of the deterministic continuum school togheter Schrodinger. Born, Heisemberg and others belonging to the nondeterministic discontinuum (matric formulation) school. Einstein named QM nonsense, consider the Dirac formal formulation of QM, ugly and irrelevant for the future of theoretical physics, and ignored experimental success of R-QFT, atomic, and nuclear physics.
There is a lof of hype around Einstein figure somewhat comparable to current hype about string theory. Historical facts are very different from current believings…
A bit more of history,
[Abraham Pais. Subtle is the Lord. Oxford University Press, New York, 1982.]
[Albert Einstein, On doing Quantum Theory calculations with Pauli p58]
[Albert Einstein to Max Born, p158 Mar 1947]
Einstein did not obtain special relativity or general relativity by their own means as more recent historical studies prove. In a recent 2005 meeting at the American Physical Society, Renn was quoted saying
[Winterberg, F. On The Hilbert-Einstein Priority Dispute]
Renn is the director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
In a recent work in the American Mathematical Society
[Mawhin, Jean. Henri Poincaré. A Life in the
Service of Science. NOTICES OF THE AMS (Oct 2005) p1039]
But some very recent historical discoverings suggest/prove that Einstein copied worked of others. From the Wiki
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein]
One of lattest i know is the historian of science Stephen G. Brush who in his recent 2001 Physics Today review of “Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc” recognized that Einstein was not sincere in his priority issues
All of this is of direct relevance to the understanding of the history the current status of string theory and social issues of stringy community, since there is a great paralellism between Einstein and string theorists. In fact,
1) String M theorists ignore experimental predictions or discrepancies of many orders of magnitude, just as Einstein ignored success of R-QFT.
2) String M theorists ignore any advances in disconected fields just as Einstein ignored nuclear physics by a ‘beatiful’ idea: search of unification via classical EM+GR
3) It has been denunciated in several sites including this blog that string theorists copy the work of others and after rename it as new. I am not wrong M. Pittaken has said here in ocassions that some of mathematical ideas usually attributed to M theorists were formulated earilier by mathematicians, even if mathematical relevant papers are not cited and names ignored.
And if i remember correctly, Peter Woit has often shown here that mathematical insights usually claimed to be discovered in the string theory field were already known or belonging to the mathematical side.
—
Juan R.
Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)
I have an interesting question for you. Woit said,
In [Albert Einstein to Max Born, p158 Mar 1947] one read
As it is well-known Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow has compared many times the real failure of string theory to the failure of Einstein unified field theory. Now subsitute in my above Born quote the keywords “Einstein”, “continuous field theory”, etc. such as
Yes, Einstein was rigth in his attempt to unify forces (a topic that Einstein learned from Hilbert axiomatic attempt to unified theory of gravitation and EM as proved in correspondence Einstein to Hilbert of 15 November 1915) but only on that Einstein was right. In the rest, Einstein was VERY wrong.
Seeing the impressive difference between Einstein UFT and current way of the Standard model or string M-theory, is not the parallelism between above quotes Born original and modified a clear signal that probably a new ‘Gross’ would say by the 2050 some like next statement?
What is your personal opinion?
–
Juan R.
Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)
Juan,
Your point is very relevant. People wants to find a unified theory if it exists. How much longer should they try to achieve that goal by flogging a dead (actually stillborn) horse, “string theory”.
I agree with the views of many here, namely that it would be more dignified for science to stop flogging string theory in the hope of making it produce numbers, and to focus on other approaches.
Juan R, if Einstein really plagiarized Poincaré and Hilbert, why haven’t they protested (as far as I know) ?
Please, enough of the off-topic material about Einstein, e.g. “Was Einstein a Plaigiarist?”. I don’t know about anyone else, but 2005 has left me thoroughly sick of endless Einstein discussions and I wish that a moratorium on some of this stuff could be instituted for 2006. If anyone has anything new and interesting to say on the topic at issue here, the relation between Einstein’s work on unification and current ideas about unification like string theory, that would be great.. But given the immense of amount of attention this topic has had over the last year, I find it hard to believe people can come up with something new to say.
Hi
In fact, it is my first visit to ur site, n seems tht u have got pissed off with all new advances in Physics like Strings,Branes, Supersymmetry, Cyclic universe and kinda stuff. Then wht do u think is relevant to study? Why dnt u suggest something?
Since Universities employ string theorists, and string theorists cite string papers, Witten Greene and others have a high H-index.I personally agree with Peter Woit and string theory critics that alternatives, such as LQG, should be pursued vigoriously, and that Universities should hire more LQG-theorists. Were this to happen, I would imagine the H-index of LQG-theorists would rise.
Kumar,
If you look at my web-site or on the arXiv you’ll find a paper by me explaining ideas that I think are a promising way forward. But I have never wanted this to be a site just promoting my own personal research. I do try and mention interesting new ideas when I learn about them, but unfortunately I think the current situation is that there are few good new ideas around. The people pursuing strings etc. are not stupidly doing so despite there being obviously much better things to work on. Under the circumstances, my view is that people need to be encouraged to come up with new ideas, and one thing that is stopping this is the overwhelming hype being used to promote failed ideas and keep people working on them.
“…unfortunately I think the current situation is that there are few good new ideas around. The people pursuing strings etc. are not stupidly doing so despite there being obviously much better things to work on….”
Loop quantum gravity is the best known alternative, although the physical picture (spin foam vacuum) is less tangible to most people than strings (albeit extra dimensional ones!).
I think you have to accept that to get funding you have to explain physically what loop quantum gravity says, but nobody does that.
Peter what do you think of Narlikar’s article in the same issue(especially the last para?) Do you agree that research in non-standard cosmology should also be supported/encouraged even today?
Probably you already know this, but the rivalry/bitterness between steady state theorists and supports of the Big bang model (especially before 1965) was
somewhat(actually much worse) than between string theorists and people
pursuing other approaches to QG.
I wonder if somebody was thinking about the fact that mathematics exist for at least 2500 years and is still thriving while physics exist for about 350 years or so and is in swampland already. Is there in physics literature some kind of equivalent of Bourbaki-type style monographs detached from particular individuals? Or physicists-all of them- only like to glorify themself, to listen only to themself, to promote only their own works -just like in any other religious sects. In my opinion, instead of thinking about who did what, when and how, may be one should think about what, after all, will survive, say, 2500 years ( e.g. like a Pithagorean theorem) in physics.
David Hilbert asked A.Einstein to become one of the editors of the Annals of Mathematics and Einstein had accepted his invitation. Everybody can find in the library volumes of Annals which have Einstein as one of the main editors. I suppose, this fact should put to the rest the dispute about relations between Einstein and Hilbert. As for the path integrals, they vere discovered by L. Bachelier in “Theorie de la speculation”, Ann.Sci.Ecole Norm.Sup.17 (1900) pages 21-86. Incidentally, H.Poincare was one of the members of the PhD committee when Bachelier was defending his dissertation, later published in Ann.Sci. Ecole…Hence, one can go on and on about who did what and when…E.g. the paper by Cameron and Martin on path integrals have been published in Annals of Mathematics in 1944 (just take a look at the math.sci net!). Given that Mark Kac was at Cornell at the same time as Feynman, introduction of path integrals into physics later on looks quite natural….. And so on and so forth…
Shantanu,
I’m fundamentally a particle physicist, of a mathematical sort, not at all a cosmologist. So I don’t have any definite opinions about what cosmologists should be doing, or about what value there is in “non-standard” cosmology.
ark: Physics is in fine shape. It’s particle physics that has run into difficulty. And there are thousands of works where physicists describes the works of other physicists (what do you think is in all of those textbooks?).
Peter, today cosmology is very much intertwined with particle physics
and vice-versa. for example (though all of this has been dicussed here):
1) the most probable candidate for cold dark matter is the supersymetric
neutralino and/or axion. (lots of experiments currently searching for WIMPs
and/or axions would thus solve two problems in particle physics AND cosmology). Also notice the plethora of papers on how one’s favorite
model beyond SM leads to a dark matter candidate. I have seen lots of
talks that one of the motivations behind building the linear collider is to investigate the properies of dark matter.
2) the first evidence for number of “active ” neutrino flavors came from theory
of big bang nucleosynthesis and observed Helium-4 abundance.
3) Evidence for non-zero neutrino mass implies that amount of density contributed by neutrinos is as much as the visible stars.
4) Concept of cosmic inflation , which is determined by potential energy of
a scalar field governed by particle physics.
I bet that every participating particle physicist must have worked or thought about (1) and (4) above
By non-standard models, I meant models of cosmology based on alternate
theories of gravity (such as B-D theory and others), or alternate theories of
gravity which explain dark matter (such as MOND)., or things like steady-state
theory of cosmology which rely on slightly different points of view.
do you think studying these could lead to insights in particle physics ?
or are you sufficiently confident in current standard Big-Bang picture
of universe consisting of ~ 23 % dark matter (for which there is no laboratory
evidence but lots of candidates from particle physics) ~70 % dark energy
(for which we have no clue), the concept of inflation (for which we have no idea
about the energy density of scalr field which caused it) and 5 % baryons(again
which we have no idea on how they came about) ?
Shantanu,
Sure, I’m aware of the ideas relating cosmology and particle physics that you describe. But having an informed opinion about the kinds of alternatives to GR or to the standard cosmological model that you mention would require knowing much more than I do about exactly what the astrophysical evidence says. I’m just not expert enough in cosmology to know precisely how strong the evidence is for various aspects of the standard picture, or exactly what this evidence rules out and what could still be consistent with it.
From everything I’ve seen the standard cosmological model looks very solid and there isn’t any unambiguous evidence that I’m aware of for alternatives. But what I’ve read are generally expository articles for non-experts, and I’m well aware from my experience with string theory that such things can sometimes gloss over problems, and it requires a more serious level of expertise to understand exactly what is really known. Since I don’t have this level of expertise, my opinions aren’t worth much on this topic.
Peter,
as a particle physicist, i am curious as to whether you think dark matter could plausibly be anything other than SUSY-particles such as the axion or neutralino? an alternative to LHC are detectors which hope to detect dark matter passing through earth.
Re #23, #24, #27: It seems that the problem is not about having new ideas, but about the energy scale where we expect such ideas to be. It is very interesting that the most suggested alternative to strings is LQG, no GUTs. I believe this comes because of the “effective theory” view of particle phenomenology, so that people aspiring to Unification disregards anything near the standard model.
LOL, Juan R., you call a wikipedia article “a historical discoverings suggest/prove that Einstein copied worked of others.”?
Dan,
Dark matter could be all sorts of things, we know virtually nothing about it.
Looking for dark matter other ways is not an alternative to the LHC. What the LHC is going to be important for is understanding electro-weak symmetry breaking.
Others:
I’ve just deleted a bunch of comments of people going on about their favorite non-standard idea about cosmology. This is off-topic: I’m no expert on this, and the people writing these comments don’t seem to be either. I don’t see the point of having an uninformed discussion on this topic here. Again, this is not sci.physics.
Hi Pete
I have just started a blog (which is going to be a hell of a challenge for me). I am a student in Physics from Mauritius. Maybe, if you are so inclined, you could add a link to my blog (http://pioneerthis.blogspot.com/) on yours. That would be kind.
Thanks
Best,
Nitin
For an informed discussion, you could do worse than visiting the astro-ph section at Cosmocoffee:
http://cosmocoffee.info/viewforum.php?f=2
Hi Nitin,
I’ve added a link. Good luck with the blog!
However off topic pre/re discoveries might be
“EW Montroll, Communs. Pure Appl. Math. 5, 415 (1952).”
merits a quick look.
Robert, I believe, most of Elliot Montroll’s papers merit more than a quick look. They are classic examples of how papers should be written. But, again, are you aware of some kind of detached from particular individual Bourbaki-style monograph in physics? As you probably know, in books by Bourbaki there is always some historical short discussion regarding to how this or that particular idea dicussed in the main text had evolved. Sometimes this is done in the form of exercises. I bet that such an idea will newer cross physics community mind since they love themselves too much to share freely ideas with others. Most typically, they cannot agree on anything between each other even without such a free sharing of ideas. The discussions above my comment are good examples. Is this a sociology of theoretical physics or it comes along with the individual who chooses theoretical physics as a profession ? The great Sh.Chern at the begining of his collaborative work with Ellie Cartan (which happened to be at the very height of the physics sucsesses in quantum mechanics, etc) had asked his mentor if it is worthy to do something in physics to which he got a reply : “stay away from this”. So Chern stayed away… letting swampland to be developed by others. Any comments?!
“… they cannot agree on anything between each other even without such a free sharing of ideas.”
Mathematics is less controversial because the distinction between fact and speculation is clearer. In physics there are always different interpretations of the facts, or a scatter in the data, which leads to controversy before new ideas become accepted. Generally in mathematics, once a theorem is proved, that’s it…
Dear Anon, this fact is well known to me as it is known to you. This is what always you can hear from physicists (I am one of those too!!). Fact of the matter is that if you look a bit closer at things, theoretical physics as much a discipline as it contains a meanigful mathematics. Hence, the controversy lies, apparently, in use of this or that mathematics to achieve the same physical goal. But, as you know, you can go from Chicago to Washington DC via Seattle or you can go straight. As far as the final destination is concerned, both ways will lead there. Hence, the intitial task of finding the only ONE right path cannot be achiewed. Yes, mathematicians prove theorems and that is it…But then, they pay attention to what had been proven by others. To come to the point, I would like to rase the following question. Suppose, that in physics somebody published an important result in some journal, say X, will this imply that those who submit their papers to journal Y should be aware and comply with the result published in X ? Or should they ignore result published in X and try to push their own agenda in journal Y ? Mathematicians will comply if the result is proven rigorously while physicists will ignore. Othervice, why it is so important to publish things in PRL or Nature ?! etc. If you do not publish your work in the “right” journal it will be ignored by those who manage to publish their works in such journal. Hence, what is the use for the rest of journals which are “wrong” from the beginning ?! Controversy in physics is synonimous with the trend NOT to be precice, NOT to pay attention to work of others (does not matter how rigorous it is), to push ones own agenda without any regard to even one’s own prior work which can be easily forgotten, abandoned, etc. Who among respectable mathematicians had published 650 or more papers during their lives? Does all these 650 papers contain rigorous proofs ?! Is it possible for the very same person to ignore its own proven results in mathematics ?
Dear Ark, in physics many accepted ideas and laws at any one time are always controversial, so the mainstream is decided to a far greater extent by the whims of the leaders and by fashions, than by hard proof. Popper even says that a hard proof (such as the physical proof for the law of buoyancy given by Archimedes) is not useful, because mainstream physics should be fallible. This is the source of the bickering in physics. In mathematics, people can be nicer to one another. Physicists are fallible, mathematicians aren’t.
Dear Annon, if you’ve read my previous comments, you’ve noticed that I have indentified physics(theoretical physics in particular) with various religious sects. I’ve provided some facts (other than reference to Popper) justifying my claim. However, I should say that mathematicians are also NOT saints whatsoever! We are talking only about the degree to which one can convert science into religion. Mathematics has proven record that the system of values was chosen correctly from the outset. Physics also have proven record of fighting between Newton and Hook, between Newton and Leibnitz, etc… So, physics had deep roots in religion and Newton in some circles known more for his religious writings than for his scientific…Clearly, if you feel that you are religious person, then follow the pre selected leaders thus going to a pre selected sect. But, please, do not make claims that this has something to do with science. I am talking not to you personally but to those who know to what extent the existing system of values is working for their benefits. Surely, unless some REAL emergency appears at the horizon, things will flow as usual non stop.
Dear Ark, the only things I can reply to are those I’ve some experience of. In mathematics, alternative theories are welcome if they are useful. In physics, alternatives are fought with rigor. One insidious method of suppressing alternatives is to say that the authors must be ignorant of the details and beauty of the mainstream model, while another is to dismiss the alternative as “speculative” (when in fact it is the maintream model that is overly speculative or even untestable, resulting in the newer model which is not so speculative and is more testable). Outsiders would imagine that such hypocrisy is easily exposed, but it isn’t, because the media seeks authority on scientific matters, which means only listening to the mainstream. So the farce just goes on.
Anon, I would be cautious talking about farce. One cannot undo the human nature…One cannot fight against what is intrinsic. However, just like with different countries, they are like people-all different and all the same. If there is something proven to be good in one country why not to borrow the idea and not to bring it to another country…Have you seen this ever happen? For the same reason, physics will stay away from mathematics even though all the ingredients of how to make things to work better are actually known.
Dear Ark, yes in the end useful bits and pieces will have to be put together. The mainstream will first resent any interference from “outsiders” who try to change their foundations, then eventually the mainstream will make a big deal out of how “kind and generous and open-minded” they are to eventually allow publication or discussion of a radical suggestion. The farce is the double standards; they publish worthless speculation, but are scared numb (or become “angry”) about “radical” ideas which are less speculative than the string theory ideas they already have!
Jackson Riszemoi
Rather irrelevant question. Reply is, of course, NOT!
Fabien Besnard
Correct, as far as YOU know…
Any other comment in my sugestion that string theorists are playing the role of Einstein, i.e. searching in the wrong way?
—
Juan R.
Center for CANONICAL |SCIENCE)
For more uncritical promotional material on string theory, here are two things from UC Davis. They have something there called the “High Energy Frontier Theory Initiative (HEFTI)”, and on their website you can read a report written by an external committee for the Dean at Davis…
Now, isn’t it rather interesting that Gunion puts this report on his website…
A while ago someone here suggested a potential analogy between the string theory establiashment and Enron. I have been seeing it this way for quite a while. I wonder whether string theorists might be found legally (and financially) liable for fraudulently soliciting funding if they were to be proven to have known (or not honestly believed) that string theory cannot describe nature. If so, how could this be brought effectively to the attention of prosecutors at the office of the Attorney General or the respective office in other counties ?
xpinor, can you, please, provide an exact web link to HEFTI. I was able to find on GOOGLE 34 entries none of which match what you’ve said. I assume, you are not referring to L.Randall public lecture…