65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Defending science, March 12, 2002
This review is from: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries (Hardcover)
This collection of twenty-three essays by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist are drawn from various publications and talks that Professor Weinberg has given over the last few years. The subjects range from defenses of reductionism and Zionism to spats with social constructionists (including his essay on the Sokal Hoax), to debates about the history of science and the prospects for utopia to the anthropic principle and final theories in physics. They have in common, besides Weinberg's well-mannered and modest (but not self-deprecating) prose, a belief in the advancement of scientific knowledge, and a criticism of mysticism, religion and ignorance. I found myself in substantial agreement with Weinberg on almost every subject, and in admiration of his measured, fair and very wise expression.
In the essay, "Confronting O'Brien" (that's the O'Brien of Orwell's 1984), Weinberg makes it clear where he stands on the possibility of two plus two equaling five, or on the so-called "strong" social constructionist view of scientific knowledge. He writes that while "there is no such thing as a clear and universal scientific method", nonetheless, "under the general heading of scientific method" there is "a commitment to reason...and a deference to observation and experiment," and "Above all...a respect for reality as something outside ourselves, that we explore but do not create." (p. 43)
In the chapter, "The Non-Revolution of Thomas Kuhn," Weinberg writes that "the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth." It is here that I demur. I think it would be better to say that science more and more allows us to better manipulate the environment to our advantage (or disadvantage!) and to see further into that environment--to smaller phenomena, more distant objects, and more clearly into the past and the present--rather than to speak of "objective truth," which in this context is little different from "ultimate truth," or a "final theory of everything." The dream of "objective truth" is the dream of religion and is anathema to Weinberg's sentiments elsewhere in the book. Note, however, that he carefully writes, "closer and closer to objective truth." That's a nice qualification, but I think he should have qualified the notion of "objective truth" as well.
But Prof. Weinberg is not without the means for having fun with his listeners and readers. He writes on page 87 from a talk to the National Association of Scholars about the scientific method, that "There is one philosophic principle that I find of use here...[that] there is a kind of zing--to use the best word I can think of--that is quite unmistakable when real scientific progress is being made." Clearly he is playing with the notion of a "philosophic" principle. Indeed, on the last page of the book he confesses, "I don't believe it is actually possible to prove anything about most of the things (apart from mathematical logic) that they [philosophers] argue about."
Proving that he is not hopelessly locked into a finite but unbounded universe, he notes several times in the book that the universe may be infinite; indeed one of the chapters is entitled, "Before the Big Bang." He also writes, "Chaotic inflation has in a sense revived the idea of a steady state theory in a grander form; our own Big Bang may be just one episode in a much larger universe that on average never changes." (pp. 176-177)
Weinberg's sense of humor is rather dry. While scolding journalists for writing that the Big Bang theory is unraveling, he observes (p. 175), "Journalists generally have no bias toward one cosmological theory or another, but many have a natural preference for excitement." Or, his take off on Kuhn's repeated and grandiose use of the word "paradigm" (after noting a paradigm shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics): "Now that really <was> a paradigm shift. For Kuhn it seems to have been the paradigm of paradigm shifts..." (p. 204)
Also: "Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot." (p. 232) Or (same page), "The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather."
Weinberg's critique of religion takes no prisoners. He writes (p. 241), "...on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful." He adds, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil--that takes religion." (p. 242) He got a lot of flak for that, but considering the situation in the Middle East, his words seem prescient, although he was merely glancing back at history.
My favorite essays are the ones on the argument from design, the critique of Thomas Kuhn's thought, and the chapter on utopias. In the first he makes a neat distinction between anthropic reasoning that is "mystical mumbo jumbo," and that which is "just common sense." (p. 238) In the latter, while denigrating the prospect of a technological utopia, he writes that a world without work, a world in which people instead pursue the arts, science, etc., would be unsatisfactory (actually he mentions "general misery") because "there is only so much new literature...only so much new music," etc. to see and hear, and with so much competition, our work would get but scant notice. I really didn't understand this because people will make work where there is none, even if it is only working on their psyches and those of their friends, their bodies, etc. And besides, where is the end of exploring and of learning? Furthermore, the real joy is in the doing, not in the being noticed.
Perhaps this reveals part of Steven Weinberg's personality to us. He is a man who has done the very best work while being noticed at the highest level. What he writes is very much worth our time and consideration.
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39 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A showdown with the enemies of science, January 6, 2002
This review is from: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries (Hardcover)
This is a collection of essays, speeches, and reviews written by Steven Weinberg during 1987-2000. This inevitably means that there is a fair amount of repetition if you read the whole book. On the other hand all are clear and well written as usually is the case with Weinberg. They are also carefully argued and persuasive. The topics that Weinberg dwells on are the reasons why the superconducting supercollider should have been built, why reductionism is good (and what it is), scientific method and history, Thomas Kuhn's paradigm change view of scientific revolutions, Sokal's hoax, and the postmodernist views of science. Weinberg argues that the only real revolution in the history of science is that brought about by Newton when Aristotelian physics was crushed. After that science has evolved in such a way that new theories have included the older ones as limiting cases. The ideas that scientific knowledge should be social constructions are carefully shown to be nonsense. The book is enjoyable and does not avoid controversy. Weinberg states in the book that: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion". This has, of course made many angry, but Weinberg indicate by several examples from history how this, in fact, is so. Buy it and read it!
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38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
good, but not essential, March 8, 2002
This review is from: Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries (Hardcover)
Steven Weinberg is doing exactly what more scientists should do -- trying to explain the importance of science to the public. Bravo! However, this collection of essays is too superficial to do justice to any of the topics it addresses. The most disappointing aspect is that it is mistitled. Only 7 or so of the 23 essays address the "cultural adversaries" of science. These are some of the most engaging pieces, on Sokal's hoax, Kuhn's theory, and the Argument By Design for theism, which Weinberg rejects (as do I). Most of the essays are about particle physics (of course!), theoretical reductionism, and the nature of science more generally. My favorite, though, is Weinberg's rejection of several utopias, and his own modest proposal, which strikes me as just the sort of thing Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper would say.
Weinberg is a naive realist with an aversion to philosophy, and consequently his arguments often have a blunderbuss quality. He makes important points, and doesn't seem to realize their significance. For instance, he emphasizes the continuity between Newtonian physics and quantum physics. However, he points out that -- 1) The Standard Model is just that, a model, which is known to be wrong, because it does not include gravity. 2) Einstein's theory of gravity, just like Newton's, is an approximation, and should not be treated as sacred. 3) "...[N]one of the laws of physics known today ... are exactly and universally valid." (150). Weinberg's attitude is much more dogmatic than these insights seem to justify, quite different from, say, Feynman, another Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist, or Popper the philosopher. I am on Weinberg's side in the Science Wars, (see my Against Obsurantism list), but he is not the most subtle and eloquent proponent of Science!
For a better overview of the Science Wars, I recommend WHO RULES IN SCIENCE. For the philosophy of science, try Salmon's CAUSALITY AND EXPLANATION and anything by Karl Popper. For a more in-depth summary of particle physics as of 2002, THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE emphasizes string theory, and Gribbin is still good on quantum physics (SCHRODINGER'S CAT and KITTENS). Feynman's "6 EASY PIECES/6 NOT-SO-EASY PIECES is a great introduction to physics for non-physicists. And on the science/theology issue, a great book is Raymo's SKEPTICS AND BELIEVERS, which emphasizes the sense of wonder and mystery in science, and avoids both religious and anti-religious dogmatism.
Contrary to what others have said, Weinberg is quite clear both that science cannot determine morality, and that there are metaphysical underpinnings to science -- page 120!
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