The Trouble with Physics (Kindle Edition) might very well put an end to future young Computer Scientists having any more Physics envy, which might be a good thing. The first part of the book covers string theory, how it evolved, what problems it tries to solve, and what the major research areas are. I've done some previous reading on the topic, Peter Shor in his Amazon.com review of the book covers the technical part of the book quite well:
String theorists: We've got the Standard Model, and it works great, but it doesn't include gravity, and it doesn't explain lots of other stuff, like why all the elementary particles have the masses they do. We need a new, broader theory. Nature: Here's a great new theory I can sell you. It combines quantum field theory and gravity, and there's only one adjustable parameter in it, so all you have to do is find the right value of that parameter, and the Standard Model will pop right out. String theorists: We'll take it. String theorists (some time later): Wait a minute, Nature, our new theory won't fit into our driveway. String theory has ten dimensions, and our driveway only has four. Nature: I can sell you a Calabi-Yau manifold. These are really neat gadgets, and they'll fold up string theory into four dimensions, no problem. String theorists: We'll take one of those as well, please. Nature: Happy to help. String theorists (some time later): Wait a minute, Nature, there's too many different ways to fold our Calabi-Yao manifold up. And it keeps trying to come unfolded. And string theory is only compatible with a negative cosmological constant, and we own a positive one. Nature: No problem. Just let me tie this Calabi-Yao manifold up with some strings and branes, and maybe a little duct tape, and you'll be all set. String theorists: But our beautiful new theory is so ugly now! Nature: Ah! But the Anthropic Principle says that all the best theories are ugly. String theorists: It does? Nature: It does. And once you make it the fashion to be ugly, you'll ensure that other theories will never beat you in beauty contests. String theorists: Hooray! Hooray! Look at our beautiful new theory.
You get the idea. But Smolin's criticism of string theory goes even deeper than that. First of all, the underlying basic assumptions behind string theory are as-yet unproven. Yet the string theory community has not placed an emphasis on working on that critical foundation. Secondly, the theory makes no predictions that can be verified. That's because there are so many free variables in the theory that you can make whatever results you want come out of it. Worse of all, as a result of the dominance of string theory in theoretical physics departments, Physics (according to Smolin) has made no progress in the last twenty years.
How could this happen? And why do the rest of us (who don't get funded by NSF grants) care? At this point, most Amazon.com reviewers wander comfortably into the sunset, but I started getting intrigued, because Smolin's criticism here is a very deep one --- it's not just criticism of Physics and how it gets funded, but of the entire scientific process, and the kind of validation needed for a scientist to get support. This is a fascinating dialogue, and very relevant not just to Physics in general, but in all fields of academic study, but Smolin's criticisms are criticisms of the peer-reviewed promotion and grant system that subjects Physics to these academic fads that can stall progress for decades at a time.
The story goes like this: young scientists get their research agenda set by senior scientists --- that's because in graduate school, they are dependent on not just funding, but on the feedback of their senior advisers who write letters of recommendations to the hiring committees of the universities that will end up hiring (or not hire) them. Senior scientists need people to do work for them, so they tend to select technicians --- people who perfect the math and can do it quickly. In turn, when these technicians get hired, they in turn depend on the peer reviews written for them by senior scientists for their promotion-committees in order to get tenure. This leads to doing work that can be recognized quickly, but also work that is to a large extent less risky --- you're better off working on something that everyone else knows something about than thinking deep thoughts that might potentially revolutionize the field. As a result this leads to the entire field all working on one thing at a time (e.g., string theory), while other important avenues get neglected. It also leads to group-think, since those who reject the current status quo (e.g., folks who don't believe in string theory) find it hard to get hired as scientists, or to get tenure. In particular, Smolin singles out the one feature of the peer-promotion/hiring process that I also dislike, which is the forced ranking of "This scientist is better than that scientist" that's so frequently required --- it almost always leads to a bias towards the fast thinker who is a great technician, away from the deep thinker. (I always rebel against such simplified rankings of persons when I manage people)
The problem with this approach is that it does work quite well during times of normal science, when there's a promising theory and working out its implications are important. But when you need to re-think the underpinnings of Physics, it falls up short, because the kind of people most suited to that kind of work, usually tend not to be great technicians. Albert Einstein is the classic example --- he was not considered particularly bright, and basically could not get a job as a scientist. (He worked at the patent office in Switzerland while thinking up his most famous ideas) Smolin goes on to name several other scientists in the same mold, at least one of which literally quit the field of science for 10 years while he thought deeply and read a lot about the underlying problems for multiple decades before he was recognized as a great thinker on the topic --- and even then he still had a hard time getting hired!
One would think that university administrators, who are very competitive might recognize this problem and realize that unconventional thinkers are relatively cheap, high risk/high reward hires, and hire them, but of course, that's not how it works, since the hiring process at major universities is peer and committee based, as described above. The result is a stale-mate, where string theory might hold sway for several decades until one particularly fine thinker finally writes a ground-breaking paper that revolutionizes the field.
Smolin proposes several ways around this, mostly by making the hierarchy flatter, giving people more scope, and creating more opportunities for high-risk/high-payoff people. What's fascinating is that he thinks that businesses, like high tech companies and venture capitalists have the answer. Coming from the opposite direction, I know for sure that it does not, and in fact, one of the reasons I believe a recent, well-known large tech company was largely so successful mostly because it actively borrowed its hiring and promotion model from academia. Naturally, the jury is still out, and it may be that it takes several centuries for the peer-based hiring and promotions systems to calcify into a system that blocks progress for decades at a time.
Regardless, for providing such provoking food for thought and interesting reading, The Trouble with Physics (Kindle Edition). Even if you hated Physics in school (which I did --- and Lee Smolin did mention the stifling curriculum being one reason why we're getting fewer scientists today), you will find it a great read. highly recommended
11 comments:
Hate the scientist, babe, don't hate the science.
great review -- nice analysis of the perils of field homogeneity.
i'm also thrilled to see
the hilarious schor inclusion; the fact that you, too, are a hardworking library supporter, user, and lover; and that you have a recommended tag! i'm a nonfiction lover (though sadly a very slow and deliberate reader), so i look forward to reading more of these. i'm officially subscribed to your blog in reader, but i'm also officially subscribed to ten billion other interesting blogs, and i usually end up reading my textbooks instead. :/ ech!
wow. i'm also pained to see that the captcha google wants me to fill out is pet peevy misspelling of mine -- "busses" instead of "buses". boo.
also, the kindle may be great, but chrome blows at rendering your blog. lame!
the same problem also afflicts interdisciplinary research. there's a large excluded middle, such that junior researchers and tenured faculty tend to be the only populations engaging in really interdisciplinary work. for the mid-career population, working interdisciplinarily generally means your work is less comprehensible, publishable, and tenurable than someone staying in a safe, disciplinary area. not good eats.
Peer-review strictures, provides the harshest resistance to new speculation that I've seen. Even with funding outside of academia to do initial research, the publication breadth is typically denied. So getting people to pay attention and eventually add to a line of inquiry doesn't happen, and the line is just as dead.
Mel, that can't be the whole story, or Einstein wouldn't have been able to get his theories published. As Churchill said about democracy, it's the worst structure possible, except for the others. I'm not quite willing to give up on the academic structure that's granted us so much progress yet, but I do want to know if there are ways to improve it.
Einstein's 1905 performance review
Typo: alway
Fixed thanks!
Re Einstein -- I read Walter Isaacson's biography, and according to that, it is a myth that Einstein was "not considered particularly bright". I gather that from a young age his brilliance was well evident to everyone he interacted with, but his troubles with the academic hierarchy stemmed from his inability to get along with the senior scientists. I.e. he was an arrogant a-hole, and so were the senior folks.
This supports your overall point, but I wanted to correct the "not particularly bright" claim.
Here's an iconoclast hypothesis to challenge your openness, recalling Feyerabend's suggestion of scientific membership open to anyone.
Elliptical orbits can have a second stationary-action Hamiltonian pair located at a barycenter. In our solar system, the solar-system barycenter (SSB) exists between former-binary Proxima (Centauri) and former-binary Sun; however, Proxima (P) is presently in a temporary hyperbolic orbit around the passing star, Alpha Centauri.
As our protoplanetary disk spiraled in to the twin foci of the Sun and SSB, it became increasingly eccentric around the twin foci due to the centrifugal force on gas penetrating the SSB, creating super-high pressure at the far (cold) 'aphelion-focus' where gravitational instability (GI) 'condensed' Mars, dwarf planets (DPs), TNOs and finally comets. As binary P spiraled out of the inner solar system, the SSB carried the GI objects with it until they fell through the shepherding SSB at orbital periods proportional to their masses, first Mars, then DPs, TNOs and finally comets, 20 km dia comets formed the inner edge of the inner Oort cloud (IOC) at 2,500 AU. High-temp minerals and chondrules formed at the near (hot) perihelion-focus and low-temp ices condensed at the far (cold) perihelion-focus, mixing high and low temp materials into comets etc.
Jupiter (J) & Saturn (S) formed by 'spin-off fission' from the Sun as plasma masses that fit within their own Roche spheres and gravitationally contracted to form proto-planets that went on to bifurcate due to excess angular momentum (AM), forming binary planets. The energy and angular momentum in the binary components caused binary pairs to spiral out due to 'core-collapse' perturbation (an evaporative thermodynamic process) until they merged, forming solitary planets. Uranus (U) & Neptune (N) spun off from proto-Proxima, bifurcated and spiraled out of Proxima's Roche sphere to be captured by the Sun into heliocentric orbits (H-orbits).
The terrestrial planets, Venus (V) and Earth (E) also spun off as giant proto-planets when the binary Sun spiraled in to merge as a luminous red nova (LRN) at 4,567 Ma, forming CAIs & short-lived radionuclides. The red-giant phase of the LRN volatilely depleted proto-E and proto-V. Proto-V bifurcated and proto-E trifurcated due to excess AM during gravitational contraction, spiraling out to form solitary V and binary E with its oversized Moon.
Mercury may be a former sibling to J's low-density moons, Ganymede and Callisto, spinning off from proto-J and spiraling out of J's Roche sphere. By comparison, high-density Io and Europa spun off later during the binary merger of J, becoming volatilely depleted in J's brief red-giant phase like V and E.
Finally, binary P merged in a smaller LRN at 542 Ma, causing the 'Great Unconformity' on Earth and the 'Cambrian Explosion' of life in dwarf planet oceans carried into the Oort cloud in Proxima's 5:2 to 3:1 resonant nursery. The DPs that fell through P's 3:1 shepherding resonance, did so at heliocentric distances commensurate with their mass and orbital periods the way Vesta fell through J's 3:1 resonance.
Sedna Period * Sedna Mass/P mass = 2.64E-7
518.57^(2/3) * 1E21 kg / (.123 Ms * 1.989E30 kg/Ms) = 2.64E-7
Vesta Period * Vesta mass/J mass = 2.42E-7
2.362^(2/3) * 2.59E20 kg / 1.899E27 kg = 2.42E-7
Part II:
P's binary merger at 542 Ma and 182,600 AU stalled the SSB at 20,000 AU, explaining the typical aphelia distance of long-period Oort cloud comets, (suggested by Matese et al, 1999, 2011 as perturbed by a hypothetical gas-giant planet, 'Tyche'). DPs falling through P's 3:1 shepherding resonance both spiral out toward the SSB and in toward the Sun, conserving AM. The perihelion and aphelion sections of highly-eccentric elliptical orbits are semicircles, vastly increasing the chance of collision with the two planets with the most circular orbits, V and E.
Binary objects formed by GI at the SSB also frequently bifurcated, like binary TNOs of the cold classical Kuiper belt composed of highly-oxidized (Type I) presolar dust and ice. When binary objects spiral in to merge they aqueously differentiate, forming salt-water oceans in their cores. Precipitation of authigenic mineral grains form sedimentary cores with mineral-grain size dependent on buoyancy. Cores contract during diagenesis, causing the 'circumferential folding' at all scales, explaining the tight cm- to dm-scale folds in migmatite in mantled gneiss domes of TNOs. Comets formed by GI following the solar LRN are composed of highly-reduced (Type II) dust and ice from condensed LRN solar plasma. Violent chemical reactions in comet cores from the highly-chemically-reduced dust and ice generally causes melting, forming 'plutonic' granite.
DPs spiraling out toward the SSB sweep up comets from the IOC at 2,500 AU and TNOs from the Kuiper belt and delivered them to V and E, forming continental masses. The most-recent DP impact in the Pacific Ocean at 66 Ma forms Far Eastern Russia, Alaska and the North American cordillera, including the Oort cloud Cambrian fossils of the Burgess shale, explaining the absence of dinosaur fossils in these areas.
The linear log-plot equation of Proxima's distance from the Sun over time: y = -x/1189.72 + 5.71707
where x is (Myr) and y is (log(AU))
- This puts the SSB over Uranus at 4,131 and Neptune at 3,900, explaining the dual pulse of the heavy bombardment (LHB). Additionally, the orbital period of Proxima at 182,600 AU is 73,600 Myr, twice the 36±2 Myr period of >100 km impact craters discovered by Eugene Shoemaker.
Post a Comment