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Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory & the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics

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After I read Lubos Motl's review below, I became interested in this book. After I saw that Lubos called Woit and his collegues crackpots in Woit's blog, I became even more interested. As Lubos is a String Theory researcher, one could expect a reaction. But not of this dimension and depth. I have a background in Physics and still love Physics. If this book makes an active Hardvard physics professor spend time on it and call its author a crackpot and the author is an active Columbia physics professor, then it must have something worth it. As the only game in town, String Theory should be challenged. This book does it.

I've been reading popular accounts of physics, esp. cosmology and quantum physics, for the past 30 years. Inevitably, the past 10 - 15 years or so a lot of these books contained many pages extolling the virtues of the new miracle theory (perpetually) on the horizon aka "string theory".
I was always led to believe this theory would finally merge quantum field theory and general relativity, and soon the very first moments of the Big Bang would be a mystery no more.

I should have known something was amiss. Whereas one (a non-physicist I mean) can at least understand the gist of quantum physics and general relativity with at least a minimal understanding of calculus or topology, no such luck with string theory. The message always seemed to be: "string theory involves very, very complicated mathematics, and except for a very few lucky people everyone is just too much of a moron to understand any of it".

After reading Peter Woit's book, I understand why none of the popular books on string theory seem to make much sense. String theory is a dream that someday the magical formula that explains everything will pop out of the vacuum (sorry, infinite number of vacua).

I will continue reading popular science books, including those of the string lovers. But this book is certainly a must read for everyone interested in the frontier of physics.

Before I begin, let me just mention that my PhD supervisor was (and is) a leading string theorist and author of the recently published 'A First Course in String Theory'.

It is interesting to read the review by Lubos Motl, who is a somewhat extreme example of an outstanding young 'establishment' theoretical physicist who like so many others has been lured onto the string theory bandwagon, which for him has now become an obsession. While attacking Woit's blog, he fails to mention that he himself also has a well-known blog which panders to the cravings of fellow string theory devotees.

His review of Woit's book, like many of his writings, is an exercise in intellectual nit-picking, where the underlying argument can be summarised as, "my (our) mathematical ability and knowledge of theoretical physics is far superior to yours, therefore I (we) are right, and you are (not even) wrong". Motl is the kind of person who would have considered Einstein to be a mathematical lightweight who most likely stumbled upon his theory of relativity more by chance than skill. Indeed, Motl would certainly have been amongst those who poo-pooed Einstein and his ideas until his death. While it is probably true that Motl and many other string theorists like him are technically more sophisticated than Einstein ever was (or could even hope to be back in those days), in terms of originality, creativity and raw insight, Einstein really would put Motl and his ilk to shame. That is why Einstein will always be 'Einstein', and Motl will always be plain 'Motl'. Motl is nothing but a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Putting such things aside, it is certainly true that string theory is by far the most beautiful and complex physical theory that man has ever contemplated, so that it is hardly surprising to find so many young researchers drawn to it. It is also one of the very few theories currently under serious investigation as a possible 'theory of everything', with the potential to unify gravity and the standard model. There was a time long ago when string theory was thought (or rather, hoped) to be a single unique theory, but the proliferation of string vacua (the 'landscape') and the consequent complete lack of predictiveness should, for any reasonable-minded person, dash any hope of it being the 'theory of everything'. Rather, the huge number of manually tunable parameters make it a 'theory of almost anything'. Given any particular universe you can imagine, the chances are that there is a string theory (or more likely, lots of them), which describe it. To still hold on to the vain and distant hope that maybe, just maybe, there is some deep, as yet unknown, underlying symmetry principle which will somehow manage to pick out our particular universe as the only possible one out of the infinite number of possible stringy universes, is beyond wishful thinking - it is an exercise in pure self-delusion. Unfortunately, "all that glitters is not gold" - mathematical beauty in and of itself simply does not imply correctness.

Of course string theory should continue to be studied, but the physics establishment is in a state of crisis when an extraordinarily disproportionate number of people are investigating a model which potentially has nothing useful to say about the real world. Time, money and effort are surely better spent elsewhere.

Even though it may leave a bitter taste in the mouths of the more fanatical string theory advocates, Woit's book remains an important contribution, and for the sake of scientific advancement we would do well to take note of the issues he raises.

Looking at the various popular science books published on the topic of fundamental physics in recent years, one might be forgiven for getting confused between what is scientific fact and what is science fiction. We have grown used to seeing top theoretical physicists enthusing about Superstrings, extra dimensions, wormholes and time travel, all of which - on the basis of current evidence - belong in the latter category, but rarely do we get an assessment of the state of this particular art that concentrates on what is known rather than what the speaker/writer would like to believe.

Dr. Woit takes the view, as do I, that if we want Science Fiction, then we can watch Star Trek or read Isaac Asimov - these people, after all, are the professionals, and do a better job at this than Harvard Professors.

What I would like to concentrate on therefore is not, "Where can I let my imagination take me?" but the ultimately far more interesting - to a scientist at least - "What is Mother Nature trying to tell us?"

To do this requires a certain humility, a certain coolness, and above all the ability to exercise judgement. It is easy to be critical of other people's ideas, but to be critical of one's own without causing the creative flow to dry up altogether, is the real challenge.

The title of the book derives from a comment made by Wolfgang Pauli - one of the founders of quantum mechanics, and arguably someone who took the criticality too far - who, upon hearing a half-baked idea from a student, remarked, "Your theory is not correct. In fact, your theory is not even wrong. Your theory makes no predictions at all."

Unfortunately, though, however much the enormous efforts expended on Superstring theory in the last twenty years may have pushed back the boundaries of mathematics, "not even wrong" is a fair and accurate assessment of its worth as a physical theory.

If theoretical particle physics is to dig itself out of the rut, it must start with an honest assessment of its achievements to date. This is the main thing that Woit provides in this book. The first part is spent describing the so-called "standard model" of particle physics. Most of this material one may find elsewhere - most entertainingly in Crease and Mann's excellent, "The Second Creation" - but it is when the book gets to the chapter entitled, "Beyond the Standard Model" that it really starts to get going. Woit is not just about saying what these attempts were, but also why they were tried, and where they led. Although Superstring theory is the main focus of this analysis, it is by no means the only one: also explored are such topics as Grand Unified Theories (GUTs), Technicolor, Lattice Gauge Theories and many others, and all with an honesty that the advocates would admit only if wired up to a Polygraph.

This book is not the end of the story. It is, on the contrary, a beginning. It forms a basis from which the younger generation of scientists can decide what is and is not worth examining. The point is just that if you are going to heal yourself, the first thing you have to do is to acknowledge that you are ill in the first place. To have an account of the state of the art free of hype and unwarranted self-promotion is a major contribution.

I should also add that, like "The Second Creation", "Not Even Wrong" generally avoids mathematical equations and can be read by anyone.

It should be required reading for every researcher coming into the field of particle physics.

Woit has written a very good book! Having studied strings since their inception (following on the duality work of Veneziano in 1968, and then many others) my work fortunately took a different path... The unique position that now appears is that of one who knows what strings are all about, but who enjoys seeing how long it'll take the rest of the physics fraternity to catch up - this claim is backed up below with a few solid predictions! Unlike a large proportion of stringy 'aficionados' (seemingly driven by egos rather than desires to advance physical understanding) Woit has taken pains to be unemotional (unlike Motl) and to present the hard facts (both in reality and as conceptually hard) to an intelligent readership. Woit has completed a difficult task well without relying on the 'descriptive' cover of mathematics - even though he has the maths tools to have done so.

A vital aspect of Woit's book is that it approaches the strings debate scientifically; that is, from its conceptual basis, although words are used to decribe the physics instead of mathematics. In my opinion this was hard. The well-chosen phrases that Woit uses to explain the physical concepts have an effective mathematical shorthand, but that's just another language; you don't need math to make useful contributions to physics - although to be heard it certainly helps. Woit's book is the first to ask the very 'hard' questions of a fraternity that does not liked to be questioned - he allows the readers to form their own views after presenting most of the hard facts.

The problem with strings (it is not a theory since nothing about it can be falsified - just as there is nothing falsifiable about a pretty picture even though it can be said to be descriptive of what the artist was thinking at the time) is that it attempts to describe physical reality from the side-in. The concepts of both quantum mechanics and general relativity describe reality from a top-down perspective, but reality is only generated from bottom-up in a very simple way. Looking in from the side one sees many things, depending on one's field-of-view; all different and parts of the whole. What strings attempts to describe is othogonal to reality as seen from above or below; thus, it is not surprising that the number of edge-on views available to strings is nearly infinite and so the true landscape of reality unseeable from its stringy perspective.

As promised above, some predictions that come from a bottom-up view of reality. The Higgs energy is 34.25 TeV, supersymmetry is true, but to see it needs high resolution, not high energy; a good example is the energy space between electron 510999 eV and selectron 512104 eV, and between proton 938272194 and sproton at just 7429 ev up-scale at 938279623 eV and spin-zero. Every mass is able to be calculated easily and exactly. The universe that we occupy is uniquely described by a very simple mechanism, and it cannot be any other way! I enjoy seeing how difficult all the stringy people are making things; they need to revisit 1972 and find the proper path. Woit's words will win in the end. He has had the courage to tell the story how it really is, and the truth is all that really matters in the end...

The "science fictional" elements of string theory have a tremendous appeal to me, frankly, so the physics presentations I've gone to and seen on video were virtually always string-theoretical in nature. Since I'm not paid to do physics, I only paid attention to the most exciting stuff. We were lucky enough to have Fenyman lecture to a couple of my physics classes, but the presentation I went to by him later was on nanoengineering, for instance, because that's cool and scifi-ish. I read the Feynman Lectures and lately worked my way through Penrose's Road to Reality. I have to say, the periodic admission or criticism that string theory, M-theory, branes+string etc. had not progressed made me wonder why it was so prominent, but I basically assumed that it was the high cost of testing it at fault, and also assumed that, frankly, the top physics researchers, including people like Hawking, knew what they were doing. I can't blame my professors, my physics study was very basic, Standard Model stuff in my 1st year of grad school (after which I stopped taking physics courses). And then and undergrad I wasn't that big on cosmology, I was into energy and thermal statistical physics and basic math tools. It was after that when a lot of my reading was popular physics books like The First Three Minutes that I basically assumed string theory had won out.

Thanks to this book (kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, frankly), I am going to look at and attend no more presentations on tachyon theory and smeared branes and so on. (You could do a whole geek-zombie comic book, I think, about students who turn into zombies studying the d-braned theories of inarticulate p-branes, shambling around calling out braaaanes.).

If you haven't read it, NEW's not stumping for anything else, not twistor theory, not steady state, not loop quantum gravity, nada. Purely establishing the negative. That's a tremendous plus. Also, I don't feel qualified to make the kind of metascientific judgment it would need to arrive at Peter Woit's position.

It seems to me more likely that the people who say you can reconfigure string theory as a convention of some sort are right. That does not mean I support the idea you can directly make string theory match conventional spacetime 4-dimensions field theory, but rather that you can PROBABLY find ways to model all the things that the string theory program gets when it uses extra compactified dimensions or branes.

I think Academician Prokhor Zakharov should have the last word, however, since his analysis was prescient:

"A brave little theory; and actually, quite coherent for a system of 5 or 7 dimensions. If only we lived in one!"

"Not Even Wrong" is a critique of String Theory, written for the non-specialist. Its criticism of String Theory is very effective, even devastating. But the book is much more than that. Woit presents the development of modern fundamental physics, in terms that a non-physicist can understand (there is not one equation in the book).
Of course, as Woit explains, a real understanding of physics can only be attained by those who understand the mathematics in which it is expressed. But Woit does the best job I have ever seen of conveying as much of an understanding as is possible without math.
As a former research physicist, I would question some of Woit's assertions about the path which development took. For example, it was clear even before the discovery of the charm quark that a quark model required at least 6 quarks. But this is a very minor quibble. Overall, Woit's presentation is masterly.

Excellent book. There are hard parts and easier parts. But the main point is that diversity is needed in the study of physics, I agree. Peter shows that string theory has not lived up to its hype, our research dollars can be better spend by providing funding for a portfolio of studies into various areas not only ST. See Penrose for some further ideas here. I vote Peter, Lee and Roger are the board of review for Physics funding based on there excellent approaches.

I've been following the arguments made by Peter Woit against String Theory for quite some time, and it's a pleasure to be able to have them all in a single volume. His arguments are very persuasive, and his writing clear and to the point. This, however, is not a book that the general audience will find easy to follow. The earlier chapters recount the canonical story of the success of the particle physics in the 20th century, and if you are familiar with that story you can safely skip these chapters. The later chapters are the really interesting ones, but unless you have at least some familiarity with theoretical particle physics and the modern mathematics, you might find yourself lost. Even with that caveat it is still possible to appreciate the central theme of this book: theoretical particle physics took a wrong turn somewhere in the late 70s and the early 80s, and has never been able to recover from this. Woit is appealing in this book to the practitioners in the field to be more honest with their assessments of the direction in which the theoretical particle physics is headed, and the lack of any meaningful progress.

Unfortunately, I am very skeptical of the potential impact of this book on the field of particle physics. The Emperor is naked, but he is perceived as irrelevant as well.

The impact of the book such as this on young minds, including me, is enormous. This is because to the eyes of untrained physics students everything seems convincing given that the argument presented tells only positive sides of the story. The very book which influenced me greatly is of course 'The Elegant Universe' and 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' by Brian Greene, a well known string theorist. It convincingly argues why string theory has to be 'The' grand unified theory, and anyone who has an ambition to make contribution in this field are easily drawn in. But be warned that this is merely a story told by someone else. Physics is a subject which you have to think for yourself and make final conclusions yourself. In this regard, the book 'Not Even Wrong' not only adds balance to the controversy but demands readers to think about these issues themselves, free from any outside influence.

The reason author bothers to go through the development of physical theories since the time of early 20th century is so that readers can see the apparent pattern in establishment of physical theories. That is, the constant interaction between theory and experiment and how this allows one to modify and refine older theory into better one such as standard model. Then reader can clearly see how this trend has deviated since the development of string theory which saw not a single experimental verification which will surely raise the eyebrows even if you are not an expert in this field.

Surely, the lack of experimental verification does not necessarily mean the string theory is wrong. And of course that is the attitude most string theorist take, that we are only seeing a tip of an iceberg so be patient. On this nobody knows the answer, hence the debate goes on and on.

The author argues there is more to the story and discuss how string theory has influence on social aspect including the job opportunity, narrow choice of research topics in order to 'survive'. This is more or less true and to me this is a very important issue because in few years time, I will be the one who will be experiencing such situation myself.

Overall, I found the book well informed to read, but I must warn the general public who does not have solid physics background will find most of the material too technical. This book along with Brian Greene's book is a 'must read' for those who intend to go into high energy physics, so that reader can decide for themselves what 'they' think is right. I'm glad to see that now the controversy is not one sided because of this book and the effort of Peter Woit on his blog.