Gregg Easterbrook: perceptive review of Smolin's book in SLATE

[Martin]

perceptive is said advisedly

he is not a physicist----more on the humanities side----and he makes some trivial technical mistakes that don't matter to the main issues.

 

a generalist shooting from the hip, but he gets some things right.

 

I'll put up some exerpts later today when I've time.

 

Here's the review in yesterday's Slate (14 September):

http://www.slate.com/id/2149598/

 

Here is some background on Gregg Easterbrook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Easterbrook

 

Brookings Institute fellow, senior editor at the New Republic,

often writes for Atlantic Monthly, NY Times...

author of several books

[Bignose]

All physics aside, I really enjoy reading Gregg Easterbrook's work. I certainly don't always agree with him, but for the most part, he explains why he feels the way he does. Instead of just disagreeing with someone because that someone comes from the other political party, like soooooo many people do.

 

The man writes one heck of a football column each week, too. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/060912

 

And his book, The Progress Paradox, really makes you think about how great we really have life today. There is a great line in the book about how today we can purchase cheap wine from the gas station that would be considered the finest quality to medieval kings. It really puts all those people who bemoan how terrible life is today in their place.

 

Gregg is almost what I would consider a modern Renaissance Man, since he keeps current with quite a few different things. Physicists out there may be upset, since some of his writings have been against the use of so much money to build bigger supercolliders when that money could be used for TB shots in Africa or something.

 

I agree with Martin's summary though, "a generalist shooting from the hip, but he gets some things right."

[Martin]

Glad to meet you, Bignose.

The book that Easterbrook is reviewing

The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next

 

is rapidly becoming a favorite physics book of mine

 

been reading it a lot.

 

It has a strong focus on the What Comes Next part, which I like.

 

(what comes next after the string embarrassment: some to-me more interesting developments in the works, with definite predictions to be tested)

 

I think Easterbrook got an important part of the message right. Glad you approve.

[Bignose]

Good to meet you too, Martin. I usually read through most new threads up in the physics and math sections, including your reviews of Smolin's book. I usually have very little to add to the physics section, though, since I am engineer, and deal with flows in pipes and mm size particles. I am not familiar with string theory since it is not going to help me compute multiphase flows. But, it is always interesting, and especially interesting is the dynamic as the theory progresses and critiques show up.

 

Here is a real good question, has it really taken 30 years for people to come out an say 'Um, string theory has yet to make a verifiable new prediction,' or have those people always been there and are just now getting press? And of course, by 'those people' I mean the well-trained (physics-wise) and respected member of the physics community, not the woo-woos who think that their theory of how love and the color purple (and no math can describe that) keeps the universe together proving, of course, that all we need it love.

[Severian]

Here is a real good question' date=' has it really taken 30 years for people to come out an say 'Um, string theory has yet to make a verifiable new prediction,' or have those people always been there and are just now getting press? And of course, by 'those people' I mean the well-trained (physics-wise) and respected member of the physics community, not the woo-woos who think that their theory of how love and the color purple (and no math can describe [i']that[/i]) keeps the universe together proving, of course, that all we need it love.

It has been brought to a head recently by all the lunatics like Linde carping on about the anthropic principle. The anthropic principle is really really devisive in physics and a lot of physicists will not stand back and let it become accepted science. However, the 'backlash' against string theory, has been a little misrepresented - the backlash is not really against the real string theorists, it is against people like Linde and Susskind. There is still a tremendous respect out there for Ed Witten and his ilk, who have done marvelous work on strings over the years. And string theory is still the favourite theory for the Planck scale.

 

Also, there is a bit of an atlantic divide on this. The US has really over invested in string theory to the detriment of collider phenomenology (and I think the resentment this caused among other physicists in the US is the real cause of all the acrimony). But in Europe, there is a much more balanced field, paying much more attention to collider phenomenology than the US does. In Europe we are quite happy to continue with a modest investment in strings while making a strong investment in phenomenology, actually testing theories in the laboratory, and would like to see the US become much more European in its particle physics outlook.

[Martin]

...

 

Here is a real good question' date=' has it really taken 30 years for people to come out an say 'Um, string theory has yet to make a verifiable new prediction,' or have those people always been there...[/quote']

 

Richard Feynman used to say

 

String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses!"

 

This is one of Larry Krauss's favorite Feynman quotes.

 

there have always been senior guys who didn't like it. Nobel Laureates Burton Richter and Phil Anderson come to mind. Robert Laughlin.

[Martin]

another review of Smolin's book "The Trouble with Physics"

just appeared. this time in USA Today

 

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-09-18-string-theory_x.htm