Customer Reviews

Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature

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Cogent objective & informative glimpse towards "Final Laws"

This is a review of both the printed book & the fabulous book on tape. I discovered that the narrated unabridged (7 cassettes) book on tape is available after I read the printed book cover to cover. I quickly bought a copy & have since listened it more times than I can recall! The narrator's voice is pleasant to listen to. His voice come across clear, brisk & very articulate. The whole wonderful experience keeps my attention riveted & gratefully takes my mind off the infamous Southern California traffic during my hours long commute each day. There's always something different & interesting that captivates my attention each time I experience this great book. Keep in mind that I'm a veritable compulsive-obsessive autodidactic with a fanatical drive to understand physical reality at the most fundamental level - call me a PRE (Physical Reality Explorer). I don't have a formal "higher" education or the mathematical tools to speak the technical language - but, like I said, I'm a fanatical layman who's bent on understanding what the hell is REALLY going on "out there" - or "in there" as the case may be...
Well, back to the book! You don't really need a deep understanding of mathematics or even an understanding of Quantum Physics to "get" what this book has to offer. Shoot, for that matter, maybe having an "empty cup" would make the experience of this book all the better! So, what's in the book? Glad you asked! Here's a brief table of contents with a few (parenthetical) comments:
· Preface
· Prologue
· On a Piece of Chalk (great introduction to some basic principles in Atomic Theory)
· Two Cheers for Reductionism ("...I am not an uncompromising reductionist, I'm a compromising reductionist!")
· Quantum Mechanics & Its Discontents
· Tales of Theory & Experiment (this has a nice history & synopsis of QED)
· Beautiful Theories
· Against Philosophy
· Twentieth Century Blues
· The Shape of a Final Theory
· Facing Finality
· What About God? (he admits that he's not a qualified Theologian here)
· Down in Ellis County
· Afterword (this might be titled something else like "...A Year Later...")
The book on tape doesn't have the Preface or the Afterword, but don't let that stop you from getting a copy 'cause you won't miss anything really important in those sections.

I liked Weinberg's description of the way the chain of questions "Why?" have arrows of explanation ever convergent towards ubiquitous laws of fundamental physics. It seems analogous to Faraday's lines of force in the fields he described. I see a metaphor here where the "field" of the "arrows of explanation" points in the direction of propagation towards answers to questions about the most fundamental aspects of physical reality. Weinberg's cutting logic & objective appraisal is cogently brought to bear on deep questions such as:
What roles do quantum theories & symmetry principles in physics play in the search for a Final Theory?
Why does each explanation of the way nature works point to other, deeper explanations?
What implications will a final theory have for our philosophy & religious faith?
What would be the role of God in a universe governed by such a theory?
Why are the best theories not only logical but beautiful?
What do physicists mean by a final theory?
What sort of things might such a theory say?
How could we tell it is indeed final?
How close are we to one?

As you can see, this book shares a curiosity with the audience. We get keen insight into Weinberg's working philosophy when he describes himself as a "rough & ready realist" & a "compromising reductionist" while he subtly & carefully defends his right to DO physics without being bothered by those fluffy, subjective, & interpretive philosophies which, you get the distinct impression, he'd like to just go away & leave him alone...
Finally, I am compelled to urge you to look at two other works by Weinberg which are actually the same material, just different media. These are a pair of lectures presented by Steven Weinberg & the late great Richard Feynman in the 1986 Memorial Lectures given in honor of the great P.A.M. Dirac. I bought the video, "Towards the Final Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lecture" and, to my great joy, found a coupled experience of Weinberg giving a slightly more technical & narrowly focused lecture in VHS video format. The title of the printed book (transcribed from the video taped lectures) is, "Elementary Particles & the Laws of Physics: The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures". These two media really compliment "Dreams of a Final Theory".

Bottom line on "Dreams": accessible, cogent, succinct & beautifully written.

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A seedy book by a Nobel laureate (I guess I couldn't have avoided this) over which readers often violently divide. The reasons are as follows: for physicists, Weinberg expounds good, but (to them) already known physics (quantum mechanics, chunks of cosmology) overladen with amateurish musings on philosophy and metaphysics (even aesthetics). For lay(wo)men (no pun intended) the book is sometimes heavy going (lots of names, abstract concepts, frequently scholastic dilemmas). On the strong side: I would highly recommend this work to the interested amateur as a historical tour through the elementary particles physics (bits of cosmology added). During this voyage, a reader will become well acquanited with virtually all that matters in contemporary high energy physics. Although not a basic read, it is completely non-mathematical. Just- it requires persistence to absorb and "digest" a multitude of interrelated concepts in this historical narrative on the unfoldment of modern physicist's "worldview". On the weak side: Weinberg's frequent forays into philosophy, theology and politics are not too rewarding, or enlightening (except as an intriguing exposure of modern scientistic mind). Nevertheless: this absorbing story of 20th century physical ideas and controversies leaves one with a good feeling: " That's how modern physics was made and how it casts spell over its inammoratos".

Dreams of a final theory
I believe this book's main propose was the Author, a Nobel prize winning physicist attempting to weigh in for Congressional funding of the Superconducting Super- Collider (SSC). This book is like reading two books in one. The first part of the book had some very good writing about atomic particle research and excellent explanations of the experiments. It also contains the author's surprisingly optimistic view that the theories being currently developed are the beginning of the correct path that will lead science to the "final theory". The remainder of the book is a promotion of the field of particle physics to show that by reduction all the sciences can benefit and share in what is learned in particle physics. Chemistry, Biology, etc at their lowest levels operate at an atomic level. Also some philosophical musings. The author has a knack for explaining complicated ideas for the layman.

Steven Weinberg is one of twentieth century's greatest theoretical physicists. He is one of the codiscoverers of the Electroweak Theory, an important piece of the puzzle that describes all of the fundamental forces of nature. He is also a very prolific writer, with several important textbooks and a few books that aim to popularize Physics and make it accessible to the general audience. The theme of this book is the long standing problem in Physics, and that is the one of unification of all forces under a single set of laws. Weinberg is as big of an authority on this subject as they come, as he has contributed and worked on various aspects of unification throughout his professional career. In this book he tries to explain what exactly is meant by "Final Theory." He is equally critical of opponents of this approach to science who deride it as overly reductionist, as he is of those who think that the discovery of final laws will in some way be the end of science. In some sense he is staking a middle ground between these two extremes.

This book was written in the years when the prospect of building the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was still tenable. SSC was supposed to be the largest particle collider in the world, and had it became operational it would have provided new data and insights into the mysteries of fundamental Physics. Or so we believed. Weinberg was one of the most prominent scientific proponents of this project, and he testified often in US Congress in its favor. Many of those encounters with politicians are discussed in this book. They provide a valuable and fascinating insight into how "big science" gets done. For one thing, scientific viability and value of any given project is only one of the important criteria that are considered when the pricetag for a project exceeds the entire budget of a small country. In the end SSC did not get the funding, and for better or worse our search for the ultimate laws of nature has since been almost exclusively a theoretical endeavor. This may change with the advent of Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, which is supposed to start taking data any moment now.

Throughout this book Weinberg touches on many philosophical themes, which in some sense is inevitable when one discusses such a vast topic as the ultimate theory of nature. Weinberg is rather dismissive of philosophical and religious considerations. This may be respectable insofar as his intellectual honesty is concerned, and we as readers at least know where he is coming from. However, the vast majority of people hope to understand the questions of the ultimate meaning in broadly philosophical terms, and it would be useful if scientists who are the most invested in the search for the final theory would at least try to present that search in some more accessible categories. Especially if they hope to have the general public on board when it comes to funding exceptionally large scientific projects.

This book is very easy to read, perhaps the easiest I have read on the subject. It is intended for the lay persons and is completely free of formulas, complicated concepts and tortuous reasonings. Maybe I would have liked that the author went into deeper explanations on some topics.

I personally liked Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics (Princeton Science Library) and Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle Physics much better, since they contained more detailed explanations on several topics. In Fearful symmetry the author devoted the entire book to the intrinsic beauty of physical laws and its formulations.

I found Mr. Weinberg's chapter "what about God" to be one of the best essays on religion/atheism and science that I have read, since he expresses his ideas in a thoroughly respectful manner and without complicated philosophical thesis.

Throughout this book you perceive the author's sadness, anger and frustration at the cancellation of the SCC project and at the way funding is assigned to the various projects in the US. Although I share his feelings, I would have preferred to share with him his passion for physics instead of his sadness about a postponed dream of a final theory. I know that unfortunately "lobbying" is essential for getting funds for pure research, but in a way, I prefer to think of scientists as never minding such "earthly" things.

I believe the author wrote this book to open more people's minds about the importance of this project and I truly wish he succeeds with it, because it seems that what started as a beautiful dream of a truth revealing accelerator, ended as a frustrating nightmare in front of an empty tunnel.

Two chapters stand out to my mind: "Against Philosophy" and "What about God?" Weinberg makes a convincing case that philosophy has made little contribution to objective truth. He also says that he knows of no important scientist in the post-war period who has been substantially influenced by philosophy. One has to be careful here with the word "post-war" because it is well-known that people like Einstein and Heisenberg were very interested in philosophy. As to the chapter on religion, who is better qualified to talk about it than a great physicist like Weinberg who understands the origin of the universe better than almost anybody alive? He makes a forceful case for atheism (though he does not use this term). My only regret is that he doesn't encourage violence against religious fundamentalists and extremists, who are always prepared to use violence to advance their agenda.

Incidentally, Weinberg's belief that a final theory is near is too optimistic. Martin Rees has got it right: The advancement of science is like fractals - every little detail can be further enlarged to reveal far more, ad infinitum. Thus, the search for scientifc truth must be endless, and the dreams for a final theory are no more than that.

This is to alert the reader to the fact that Amazon is mistakenly attributing this book to the wrong writer. The author of "Dreams of a Final Theory" is, of course, Steven Weinberg (no middle initial), who is also the author of the recent "Lake Views" and "Facing Up," as well as the earlier book for the general public, "The First Three Minutes." Weinberg has also authored the recent treatise, "Cosmology," and the three-volume treatise on "The Quantum Theory of Fields." Perhaps in reviewing this comment Amazon will correct the error.

Weinberg is a deep thinker and masterfully clear writer. All the praise given by other reviewers of this book is well deserved. Weinberg argues brilliantly for reductionism as a statement of the order of nature. Simply put, nature is ordered in such a way that every "chain of whys", every "arrow of explanation", converges towards elementary particle physics. Although it is physicists who do the explaining, Weinberg says that the convergence of the arrows is a characteristic of nature itself.

But there is one tiny fly in the ointment, one chain of whys dangling loose from the others. Tucked away on pages 44-45 is a passage that begins "Of all the areas of experience that we try to link to the principles of physics by arrows of explanation, it is consciousness that presents us with the greatest difficulty." Weinberg bravely predicts that further investigation of consciousness may reveal "something, some physical system for processing information, that corresponds to our experience of consciousness itself, to what Gilbert Ryle has called `the ghost in the machine.'"

Huh? No one, not even Weinberg, has given an inkling what form such an explanation might take. Consciousness stands alone in this regard - life itself, even before the mechanisms of cell reproduction and DNA were discovered, was seen as ultimately explainable in terms of the known laws of chemistry and physics, for example by von Neumann, who posited a self-reproducing machine consisting of a blueprint, a machine for making a duplicate of itself from the blueprint, and a copier that placed a copy of the blueprint into the duplicate.

But nobody has yet proposed even the vaguest outline how consciousness might be brought into the ambit of physics and chemistry.

What I take away from all this is that we have not one, but two endpoints of the arrows of explanation. Weinberg argues that the only way to extend our understanding of physics is to do experiments, collect data. It is fortunate that the Europeans, if not the Americans, have seen fit to pursue this goal by building an unprecedently powerful particle accelerator.

But there are also unanswered questions in the realm of consciousness. It is likely that explaining consciousness will also take more experimental investigation. Weinberg notes that biologists have worked out the entire wiring diagram of simple animals, such as the nematode worm C. elegans - "Of course a worm is not a human. But between a worm and a human there is a continuum of animals with increasingly complex nervous systems, spanning insects and fishes and mice and apes. Where is one to draw the line?" Moreover, nematode worms and humans share a common ancestor. At what point in the line of descent did consciousness first appear?

But no one can imagine how these questions can be answered in terms of physics and chemistry. As Weinberg quotes the physicist Brian Pippard, "What is surely impossible is that a theoretical physicist, given unlimited computing power, should deduce from the laws of physics that a certain complex structure is aware of its own existence."

This impasse should serve as much for inspiration as for discouragement. As Niels Bohr has said, "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."

I find this book extremely stimulating and from that perspective this book couldn't be much better. I admire the way the author shared his understanding of theoretical physics with a lay person.

Although, the book suffers from some more or less serious imperfections. Maybe the greatest of them is that too many questions are opened and not adequately discussed. By this I don't think of questions that the physics sets itself, but the questions that put the physics in perspective with other aspects of human being. For example, correlation between mathematics and physics is given a great meaning through so called unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, but the author explanation of it was too simple and unprecise. Then philosophy. The chapter Against philosophy is, I think, one big contradiction. The author attacs some philosophical standing-points although he makes it clear that these very standing-points were in some points in time the motor of development of physics. Even the author's work, as explained in the first chapter, is in a way driven by one philosophical standing-point. Also, from the authors elaboration it is obvious that the problem is not a standing-point itself, but rather unreadyness of some physicists to give up on it when a standing-points become ineffective. How come then that some standing-points are good and some are not?

I am aware that careful elaboration of all the relevant questions would give too much complexity to the book ment to be popular. And this wouldn't matter if only I haven't got the feeling that most of this questions were brought up and answered in such a way for the reason of convincing us (or somebody more important) in necessity of the SCC project. Not that I think it is not all right to do that, it is just that it unnecessarily burdens this all in all beautiful book.

This is an easy to read but uneven book. Some discussions are pretty clearly exposed, mainly the technical ones. But it's not a balanced view of quantum field theory. E.g.,the author deservedly bashes some philosophers of physics but then puts everybody in the same basket. He keeps hamming in the quest for unification which is a research program with deep philosophical roots. The argument for a "final theory" is not convincing; in fact one wonders if it makes any sense at all. In fact it is not discussed in a critical way. Also, there's no comments about the work of the mathematical physicists concerning the axiomatic or constructive point of view of the theory, which, it seems, is not very encouraging. But, for those who feel that canceling infinities is all right, as long that it works, no problemo...