Robert Matthews on string---London Financial Times

[Martin]

The Financial Times of London has been described as a prestigous UK newspaper read by many financial movers and shakers. It recently published an article by physicist and science writer Robert Matthews which caused a minor uproar on the physics blogs.

 

Until today, i had seen only a few isolated quotes so I had no idea of what the fuss was about. This morning I found this transcription and also a Matthews website listing professional credentials, peer-reviewed publications and a sample of his writings aimed at popularizing science for general audience.

http://www.robertmatthews.org/

http://www.robertmatthews.org/AcadCV.html

 

===quote===

 

Nothing Gained in Search for 'Theory of Everything'

By Robert Matthews (visiting reader in science at Aston University, Birmingham)

The Financial Times: June 2 2006

 

They call their leader The Pope, insist theirs is the only path to enlightenment and attract a steady stream of young acolytes to their cause. A crackpot religious cult? No, something far scarier: a scientific community that has completely lost touch with reality and is robbing us of some of our most brilliant minds.

 

Yet if you listened to its cheerleaders – or read one of their best-selling books or watched their television mini-series – you, too, might fall under their spell. You, too, might come to believe they really are close to revealing the ultimate universal truths, in the form of a set of equations describing the cosmos and everything in it. Or, as they modestly put it, a "theory of everything".

 

This is not a truth universally acknowledged. For years there has been a concern in the rest of the scientific community that the quest for the theory of everything is an exercise in self-delusion. This is based on the simple fact that, in spite of decades of effort, the quest has failed to produce a single testable prediction, let alone one that has been confirmed.

 

For many scientists, that makes the whole enterprise worse than a theory that proves to be wrong. It puts it in the worst category of scientific theories, identified by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli: it is not even wrong. By failing to make any predictions, it is impossible to tell if it is a turkey, let alone a triumph.

 

It is this loss of contact with reality that has prompted so much concern among scientists - at least, those who are not intimidated by all the talk of multidimensional superstrings and Calabi-Yau manifolds that goes with the territory. But now one of them has decided the outer world should be told about this scientific charade. As a mathematician at Columbia University, Peter Woit has followed the quest for the theory of everything for more than 20 years. In his new book Not Even Wrong he charts how a once promising approach to the depest mysteries in science has mutated into something worryingly close to a religious cult.

 

It began in the mid-1980s with the emergence of so-called superstring theory, according to which all the particles and forces in the universe are linked to vibrations of tiny, multidimensional, string-like entities possessing something called supersymmetry (don't ask). By unifying so much so neatly, superstring theory seems to be a glimpse of the theory of everything that had eluded even Einstein himself. Many of the world's smartest theoreticians joined the effort to understand superstrings, including several Nobel Prize winners. But they soon ran into trouble. The mathematical elegance of superstring theory collapsed under a mass of messy facts about the real universe. Worse still, hopes that it would lead to a unique theory of everything evaporated, with ever more versions emerging and no obvious way of deciding between them.

 

By the mid-1960s superstring theory had been subsumed into something called M-theory. Not even its inventor - the charismatic Edward Witten of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton - knows what the M stands for. Nor has he, or anyone else, succeeded in persuading M-theory to make single testable prediction. As such, it has more in common with a religious conviction than science. Most theorists pay aat least lip-service to falsifiability, popularized by the philosopher Karl Popper, according to which scientific ideas must open themselves up to being proved wrong. Yet those involved in the quest for the theory of everything believe themselves immune from such crass demands. Mr. Woit quotes a superstring theorist dismissing the demand for falsifiability as "pontification by the 'Popperazzi' about what is and what is not science."

 

Coming from a community that refers to Professor Witten as The Pope this is a bit rich. But it also suggests that the whole field is now propped up solely by faith. Mr Woit provides plenty of evidence for this: the insistence of M-theorists that, in the quest for ultimate answers, theirs is the only game in town; the lectures with titles such as The Power and the Glory of String Theory; the cultivation of the media to ensure wide-eyed coverage of every supposed "revelation".

 

Mr. Woit has shown that some very smart people in academia have lost the plot. But why should the rest of us care? The reason is simple: the quest for the theory of everything has soaked up vast amounts of intellectual effort and resources at a time when they are desperately needed elsewhere. We can ill afford to let more brilliant talent vanish into the morass that is M-theory.

 

Those who have show signs of having fallen prey to the "sunk-cost fallacy", the huge intellectual effort needed to enter the field compelling them to plough on regardless of the prospects of success. It is time they were put out of their misery by being told to either give up or find funding from elsewhere (charities supporting faith-based pursuits have been suggested as one alternative). Academic institutions find it hard enough to fund fields with records of solid achievement. After 20-odd years, they are surely justified in pulling the plug that has disappeared up its Calabi-Yau manifold.

 

===endquote===

 

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a482e470-f264-11da-b78e-0000779e2340,s01=1.html

[Severian]

the charismatic Edward Witten

 

Lol... something tells me the author has never met Ed.

[Martin]

Lol... something tells me the author has never met Ed.

 

Yeah, that word "charismatic" struck me as odd too. Not a macho type of charisma anyway. I never met him but on video it is more the high-pitched slightly nasal, very restrained voice. a kind of blank reserved look.

Maybe some women find that sexy but I think it was David Gross and Brian Greene that got all the charm and left Witten an extra helping of brain.

 

=====================

 

If you are familiar with the Financial Times, I would like to know if the style of Matthews article didnt seem a bit rowdy-----or is UK journalism allowed more latitude than one gets e.g. in the NY Times

[Severian]

David Gross doesn't have much Charm - just plenty of arrogance. I have never met Briane Greene, but I have seen him on TV. Ed Witten is also surprisingly unconfident (socially).

[abskebabs]

From what I know of it, I am skeptical of string theory to say the least, I think it pales in comparison in comparison QM and General Relativity for example, but I acknowledge I have much more to learn before I can have an educated impression of it. Can you give me any reason why string theory/M theory should not be considered as mathematical nonsense wrapped up in jargon, to put it bluntly?

[Martin]

... Can you give me any reason why string theory/M theory should not be considered as mathematical nonsense wrapped up in jargon, to put it bluntly?

 

I think it's time to put more effort into exploring the alternatives.

Just my private opinion.

[JTM³]

Maybe Matthews does have a point; but speaking of religious cults, this jerk sounds like Hank Hannegraff and other so-called "heresy hunters."

 

Scientists really are a rowdy bunch...

 

 

I suppose the science channel is Satan's media outlet?

[abskebabs]

I think it's time to put more effort into exploring the alternatives.

Just my private opinion.

Hmmm... What is your opinion on David Bohm's ideas about holography that he published several books on before he died? He set out with an approach to understanding the Universe rather tan with Mathematics like the string theory. I would presume, had he lived longer, he would have started building up a mathematical theory? Do you think further building on his ideas could provide a pathway to an alternative theory. Also what are your opinions on Milo Wolff's Wave structure of matter theory?

 

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted what you meant.

[Martin]

Hmmm... What is your opinion on David Bohm's ideas about holography ... Also what are your opinions on Milo Wolff's Wave structure of matter theory?

...

 

I'll pass. I have a special cop-out here that lets me off the hook:-)

 

My position on this (which could be called a cop-out) is that you train up GOOD POSTDOCS and give them THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE

 

as it happens quite a few young researchers have been going into non-string areas Quantum Gravity lately

 

this often means that if they have been in the US they have to go other places (Canada' date=' UK, France, Germany, Holland...)

 

because in the US the string establishment has research funding and positions sewn up tightly-----in the whole US there is only one non-string QG research group, which is at Penn State.

 

So you see people go to Cambridge, Nottingham, London Imperial, UWO (Canada), Waterloo (Canada), Marseille, Utrecht. BECAUSE IN THE U.S. YOU DO NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM TO RESEARCH NON-STRING QG.

If you have a PhD and are looking for a postdoc position, no matter what your track record of publication is, no matter how smart, no matter how independent motivated you are, you cannot get a postdoc position in alternatives to string. You have to change to string. Or get out of the U.S.

 

Most of the alternatives to string work done at those places I mentioned is technically in the area of SPINFOAM MODELS, DYNAMICAL TRIANGULATION, but there is also Causal Sets approach and Quantum Einstein Gravity (so-called QEG that they do mostly in Germany e.g. Uni Mainz).

 

Abskebab my theory is this. TRAIN PEOPLE TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES and figure out what THEY think is promising to spend 5 or 10 years of their early career on. Train them to understand and be exposed to several approaches and LET THEM PICK. Assign the research grants based on who shows creativity and mental independence and the quality of their past work and then give'm their head, like horses.

 

WHAT THEY PICK IS NOT NECESSARILY what you or I would guess! So I would not try to pick the winners from where I stand. I just wish the U.S. major universities and funding agencies would dump some string deadweight and diversify.

 

there is a smart young guy at Cambridge named Dan Oriti who knows all the different approaches to non-string QG, and Cambridge University Press picked him to assemble and edit a BOOK which is like a SAMPLER of all the different approaches.

 

It is scheduled to come out this year and already about a dozen draft chapters are available free for download on the "arxiv". That means a dozen different approaches to Quantum Gravity that people are working on and that Oriti thinks are worth including in his book.

 

Half a dozen anyway:-) there will be some double coverage I expect.

 

The book is provisionally titled [b']Approaches to Quantum Gravity: towards a new understanding of space time and matter[/b]

 

So when I say that in my opinion it is time to devote more effort to alternative QG, I mean most likely something you will be able to find in the TOC of Oriti's book. I won't presume to pick. Smart grad students are the hunting dogs---if they don't have a good nose then we are really in a fix---that is what they are supposed to know how to do. And hey! if a smart postdoc comes up with something completely different that isnt even a chapter in Oriti's book, then if the guy has proven ability I would say go with it!

==========

 

Sorry I can't respond specifically to what you say about David Bohm (a famous outstanding figure in 20th century physics) and Milo Wolff. Maybe someone else here can comment.

[Martin]

I remembered where to find a list of chapters submitted by various people to Oriti, to use in his book

 

http://christinedantas.blogspot.com/2006/03/draft-chapters-to-approaches-to.html

 

I will copy the Dantas list

list the drafts in reverse chronological order of submission to the arXiv:

 

1. [gr-qc/0603022]

Title: Doubly Special Relativity: facts and prospects

Authors: Jerzy Kowalski-Glikman

Comments: Submitted to the volume "Approaches to Quantum Gravity - toward a new understanding of space, time, and matter", D. Oriti ed

 

2. [hep-th/0603002]

Title: Lorentz Invariance Violation and its Role in Quantum Gravity Phenomenology

Authors: John Collins, Alejandro Perez, Daniel Sudarsky

Comments: Draft chapter contributed to the book "Towards quantum gravity", being prepared by Daniele Oriti for Cambridge University Press

 

3. [gr-qc/0602037]

Title: Gauge/gravity duality

Authors: Gary T. Horowitz, Joseph Polchinski

Comments: To appear in "Towards quantum gravity", ed. Daniele Oriti, Cambridge University Press. 20pgs; v2: references updated

 

4. [gr-qc/0602120]

Title: Categorical Geometry and the Mathematical Foundations of Quantum General Relativity

Authors: Louis Crane

Comments: Contribution to the Cambridge University Press volume on Quantum Gravity

 

5.[gr-qc/0601121]

Title: The causal set approach to quantum gravity

Authors: Joe Henson

Comments: 22 pages, 4 figures, Latex. Extended version of a review to be published in "Approaches to Quantum Gravity - Towards a new understanding of space and time" (ed. D. Oriti), Cambridge University Press, 2006. Ref added. Dedicated to Rafael Sorkin on the occasion of his 60th birthday

 

6. [gr-qc/0601095]

Title: The spin-foam-representation of loop quantum gravity

Authors: Alejandro Perez

Comments: Draft chapter contributed to the book "Towards quantum gravity", being prepared by Daniele Oriti for Cambridge University Press. 19pgs

 

7. [gr-qc/0512065]

Title: Consistent discretizations as a road to quantum gravity

Authors: Rodolfo Gambini, Jorge Pullin

Comments: 17 Pages, Draft chapter contributed to the book "Approaches to quantum gravity", being prepared by Daniele Oriti for Cambridge University Press

 

8. [gr-qc/0604045]

Title: Unfinished revolution

Authors: Carlo Rovelli

Comments: Introductive chapter of a book on Quantum Gravity, edited by Daniele Oriti, that will appear with Cambridge University Press.

 

9. [hep-th/0604120]

Title: Towards Gravity from the Quantum

Authors: Fotini Markopoulou

Comments: Expanded version of the contribution to "Towards Quantum Gravity", edited by D.Oriti, to be published by C.U.P

 

10. [gr-qc/0604075]

Title: Emergent General Relativity

Authors: Olaf Dreyer

Comments: Contribution to Towards Quantum Gravity, a collection of essays on the different approaches to quantum gravity edited by Daniele Oriti. To be published by Cambridge University Press

 

11. [hep-th/0604130]

Title: Algebraic approach to quantum gravity II: noncommutative spacetime

Authors: S. Majid

Comments: 26 pages, 2 .eps figures; book chapter to appear in D. Oriti, ed., Cambridge Univ. Press

 

12. [hep-th/0604212]

Title: Quantum Gravity, or The Art of Building Spacetime

Authors: J. Ambjorn, J. Jurkiewicz and R. Loll

Comments: 22 pages, 6 figures. Contribution to the book "Approaches to Quantum Gravity", ed. D. Oriti, Cambridge University Press

 

13. [hep-th/0605052]

Title: Generic predictions of quantum theories of gravity

Authors: Lee Smolin

Comments: For inclusion in "Approaches to Quantum Gravity - toward a new understanding of space, time, and matter", edited by D. Oriti, to be published by Cambridge University Press

 

14. [hep-th/0605202]

Title: String Field Theory

Authors: Washington Taylor (MIT, Stanford)

Comments: To appear in "Towards Quantum Gravity", ed. Daniele Oriti, Cambridge University Press; 22 pages latex

 

christine dantas has the active links to these articles, so anyone can browse them. To save trouble, I only have but the numbers in brackets

====================================

EDIT EDIT EDIT

Hi abskebabs, I will try to answer here and save a post. The way most people talk about the QG scene you are essentially RIGHT to say that the "2 major research areas were string theory and loop quantum gravity". The trouble is, the way professionals themselves use the word, LQG can mean TWO THINGS.

It is the narrowly defined approach developed mostly in the 1990s called "canonical" LQG, which not so many people work on. AND THEN THERE ARE VARIOUS OFFSHOOTS. So "Loop-and-allied" QG (which people also sometimes mean when they say LQG) includes things like spinfoam models, group field theory, dynamical triangulations. So "LQG" is used both in a general sense (non-string QG approaches with over 100 active researchers) and in a specific sense (perhaps 5-10 active researchers). This is bound to be confusing. You get people who talk confidently about the pros and cons of LQG and make blanket statements which you find out later do not apply to 90 percent of the non-string QG research actually being done.

 

what you said is right in line with what lots of other people that you'd expect to be familiar with the scene have said----using "LQG" as a kind of generic catch-all term. Even the QG people themselves called their lastyear's conference LOOPS '05-------and had invited speakers talking about a halfdozen different approaches that were not actually LQG. It is nobody's fault. Just how language evolves. I have started trying to say "non-string QG" for the whole field. sometimes simply saying "QG" gets the idea across.

 

You ask what Penn State has. They are weak in the newer lines (spinfoams, group field theory). their spinfoam guy (Perez) has gone to Marseille. they are strongest in an offshoot called LOOP QUANTUM COSMOLOGY where you build models of the big bang non-singularity (the big bounce) and invent ways to test the models by observing microwave background. and also they are strong at using vintage canonical LQG to model black holes----especially getting rid of the the singularity (similar to how it is done in cosmology). Penn State, you could say, is strong in the more traditional LQG plus its APPLICATIONS to special situations like quantizing big bang and black hole----also computer simulations and attempts to find ways to test by observation. They have Ashtekar (one of the founders of LQG responsible for much of the development in 1980s and 1990s) and Bojowald (the founder of LQC, the application to cosmology). Both of them are now focusing a lot on black hole quantum physics.

 

Probably the overall most exciting QG place is Perimeter Institute at the University of Waterloo (Ontario Province Canada)-----although Cambridge (or several UK places taken together) is also good. Lee Smolin used to be at Penn State but he moved to Waterloo to help start up Perimeter. If I was a grad student in QG that would be first on my list of where I'd like to go.

[abskebabs]

Very interesting, and I was thinking the only 2 major research areas were string theory and loop quantum gravity:-p ! I share your feelings about string theory being the only major research area in this field being pursued by American universities(apart from PSU)? By the way what is being researched at Penn state?

 

I remember another theory, I have seen recently by Matti Ptikanen(I think thats how his name is spelt!) at Helslinki University. It is titled Toplogical Geometrodynamics. Have you heard of it?

[Martin]

Abs

 

the main QG topics at Penn State are

quantum models of black hole

Loop Quantum Cosmology---with numerical modeling of big bang

phenomenology---how to test by observation (of CMB, of Gammaray bursts)

 

main people Abhay Ashtekar (LQC and BH)

Martin Bojowald (LQC and BH)

Parampreet Singh (phenomenology, numerical studies, also LQC and BH)

Tomasz Pawlowski (similar topics as Singh)

a good indication of who is who can be seen by checking who co-authors with Ashtekar, and what topics their papers are about. here is a list

http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+Ashtekar/0/1/0/all/0/1

 

more stuff is here, but harder to find

http://www.phys.psu.edu/

list of department seminar talks is here

http://www.phys.psu.edu/events/

(change the time period from "this week" to spring 2006 or fall 2005)

 

it is a small QG group at Penn State. there is a lot else going on in the department though, so you will se a whole bunch of seminar talks for spring 2006 listed including maybe 10 or so about QG. the topics of the talks indicate the kind of research (mainly it is quantum BH and BB modeling, and seeking ways to test models)

[Martin]

in line with the topic

robert matthews review of PeterWoit's book "Not Even Wrong" in the London FT

 

the book has now been reviewed in the WALL STREET JOURNAL

even though it has not come out in the US yet. this is a bit strange

Woit's book is not scheduled to be for sale in the US until September

 

however

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articleArchive/jun2006/notevenwrong.php

 

the review caused some fuss when it appeared in the WSJ

but I could not read it online because am not a subscriber---WSJ online needs password

however the WSJ article by Sharon Begley was picked up by a FLORIDA paper

where I saw it:

====quote====

Has string theory tied up better ideas in physics?

By SHARON BEGLEY The Wall Street Journal

2006-06-23

 

(AP) - Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli didn't suffer fools gladly. Fond of calling colleagues' work "wrong" or "completely wrong," he saved his worst epithet for work so sloppy and speculative it is "not even wrong."

 

That's how mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory. In his book, "Not Even Wrong," published in the U.K. this month and due in the U.S. in September, he calls the theory "a disaster for physics."

 

...

...

...

===endquote===

 

So now US media have in part caught up with the London media---where we saw reviews

of Woit's book recently by three different reviewers, in the Financial Times, in the Sunday Times, and in the regular Monday edition of the London Times.

 

slashdot picked up on it (and the Florida paper reprint form WSJ)

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/23/2226257