The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design [Paperback]

Leonard Susskind (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0316013331 | ISBN-13: 978-0316013338 | Edition: Reprint

In his first book ever, the father of string theory reinvents the world's concept of the known universe and man's unique place within it. Line drawings.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (December 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316013331
• ISBN-13: 978-0316013338
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Mathematical Physics

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. As modern physics has developed a better understanding of how the universe operates at its most fundamental levels, one thing has become increasingly clear: we're damned lucky to be here at all. The laws of physics are precariously balanced, and were the value of one constant slightly different, life as we know it wouldn't exist. To explain the ridiculous improbability of it all, some physicists have turned to the "Anthropic Principle": the universe seems perfectly tailored to us because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe it. The underlying rationale for this argument involves the "landscape" of potential laws of physics (which, it turns out, aren't so immutable after all), a whole bunch of extra dimensions and lots of particle physics. Luckily, Susskind—the father of string theory—does the job right, guiding readers through the current controversy over the Anthropic Principle. Make no mistake: this is the cutting edge of physics as described by one of the sharpest scientific minds around. While the subtitle is a bit misleading (this isn't about intelligent design in the Kansas Board of Education sense, but actually a controversy at once bigger and less prominent), persistent readers will finish this book understanding and caring about contemporary physics in ways both unexpected and gratifying. (Dec. 12)
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From Booklist

Physicist Susskind is a founder of string theory, and his first popular work will be of utmost significance to science readers. They will be challenged throughout by Susskind's ideas, of which strings are but a part; his driving curiosity is to discover why the laws of physics are what they are and so finely poised to permit life. Susskind discusses how slight alterations of physical values would destroy atoms and, hence, life. Deeming unscientific any proposition of a supernatural agency in setting the physical dials so exactly, Susskind advances a radical concept he calls the "landscape." Valiantly explaining it to his lay audience, Susskind, after introducing the moving parts of his theory (general relativity, quantum mechanics, vacuum energy), compares our universe to a rolling ball on an undulating landscape. Its place of rest equates to our laws of physics. In this extraordinary work, Susskind ushers us to the mind-bending edge of a possible paradigm shift. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (December 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316013331
• ISBN-13: 978-0316013338
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #141,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Mathematical Physics

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

226 of 239 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A slick sales job with a large side of information January 4, 2006

By Royce E. Buehler VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Unlike the physicists who wrote the first two reviews, I don't know much 'bout string theory. Which is why I turn to books like this, or Greene's _The Elegant Universe_. Let me try to explain what this book is trying to do, and how, for one proverbial intelligent layman, it stacks up.

Susskind is a man with a mission. What he's describing here is not settled science, but his own view of the direction fundamental physics should be trying to go. In order to describe that properly, of course, he has to explain a good deal of settled physics along the way. He does this engagingly and fairly clearly, though he doesn't have the truly remarkable expository gifts of Brian Greene, and I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to tackle this book should read _Elegant Universe_ first.

The book has two tightly intertwined main theses. The first has to do with the Anthropic Principle: the observation that a large number of physical constants are required to fall within a surprisingly narrow range of values, in order for the apparatus of biology ever to appear. Slight tweaks to any of them would make galaxies, stars, atoms, chemical elements heavier than helium, to say nothing of carbon based life forms, impossible. Susskind's thesis here is that the AP is neither, as many theists would like to claim, evidence for a Designer who tailored the universe to make us possible; nor, as secular physicists would like to claim, an uninteresting tautology requiring no explanation. Rather, its explanation is to be found in the last decades' developments in string theory....

His second thesis is that these developments - especially the way in which string theory, which was originally hoped could prove mathematically that the various physical constants could have only one uniquely determined set of values, turned out to be a family of five, then many, then mind bogglingly many, distinct theories - are not the intellectual catastrophe some have felt them to be. Rather they are an argument in favor of the truth of string theory, because the innumerable variations in the laws of physics permitted by the various string theories provides a naturalistic explanation for the Anthropic Principle. To wit: cosmic inflation creates innumerable new universes all the time, each with its own set of physical constants, and it is not surprising that some of them should have laws (and in particular a value for Einstein's cosmological constant, which is more extremely constrained than any of the others) which permit life to arise. The collection of all these possible universes, by analogy with the "fitness landscapes" of evolutionary theory in biology, is what Susskind designates as "the cosmic landscape" of the title.

There are a lot of problems with this point of view. Susskind considers them, and argues enthusiastically, subtly and fairly that none of them is a show stopper. In the end, I felt he failed to close the sale. Until someone solves what he calls the "measure problem", the whole scheme is dead in the water. Further, we are never given a positive reason to believe in the truth of string theory, other than the fact that no other consistent theory unifying gravity and quantum mechanics has surfaced yet.

In his final chapter, Susskind tries to summarize the disparate attitudes of a dozen major living theorists toward this emerging Landscape picture. The two most telling criticisms come from physicist David Gross. The book gives them a pretty fair hearing , and doesn't claim to dispose of them.First, if we adopt the idea that the physical constants have randomly created values, the enterprise of trying to explain why they have the particular values they do comes to a dead halt - perhaps prematurely. "Quantum fluctuations did it" puts the kibosh on further inquiry as surely as "God did it" would. Second, we don't really know how wide a range of physical constants could produce life and intelligence in *some* form.

Those who are looking for a primer on string theory, or on the latest truths that scientists have learned and agreed on, won't find it here. But if you are interested in the Anthropic Principle, or in the ferment of controversies at the edge of the presently knowable, you won't have to agree with Susskind to take delight, as I did, in colorfully articulated, intriguing, and frequently illuminating read. Read more ›

56 of 63 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting book about the properties of reality December 25, 2005

By Jill Malter

Format:Hardcover

Is this book just what I wanted? Well, what I think I really wanted was for Einstein to return to us today and write a book on the philosophy of modern physics based on today's understanding of things. Yes, that would have been just great! But Einstein is dead. Luckily, of course, there are some excellent physicists around, such as the author of this book.

This book, written by an eminent String Theorist, has some fine explanations for the layman of some topics in modern physics, including String Theory. But the most interesting part is advertised in the title, namely the nature of the cosmic landscape.

The cosmic landscape refers to the mathematical space which has as its elements the values of the "fields" that constitute the physical laws and constants which apply to a particular "universe" (with a small u) or "pocket universe" if one prefers that term. The idea is that there may be many possible sets of physical laws and constants. The more we discover about physics, the more it seems that there are plenty of possible universes. But do they really exist? That is, is the landscape populated by more than our known universe? Is it heavily populated? The author argues that it is. And that certainly makes sense to me.

We're told about the anthropic principle. At its simplest, this principle merely states that we have to live in a universe that permits intelligent life. That's not very profound. But this principle also suggests that there is indeed a landscape of possible universes, and it encourages us to verify that only a very small fraction of them would permit the kind of complexity required for intelligent life. And in fact, Susskind gives us a good example of this.... It turns out that the Cosmological Constant (which causes a universal repulsive force, sort of the opposite of gravity) we observe is about 120 orders of magnitude less than an unsophisticated theory might predict. That leaves us with a very tiny number to explain, a number which is fundamental to the laws of our universe. Well, sure enough, there appears to be an anthropic reason. Susskind tells us that Steven Weinberg calculated that a constant even ten times bigger would result in enough repulsion so that the clumpiness of the early universe would have been reduced so much that no galaxies, stars, or planets would have formed. Similarly, a large cosmological constant with the opposite sign would have caused our early universe to collapse.

Given that there may be a large multiplicity of actual universes, how do they originate? Since we appear to be in a rather unusual universe, it is tempting to hypothesize that there's some sort of selection principle at work. But what? We get into questions about a possible evolution of universes. But this could be quite different than evolution in biology. Are there incremental changes between generations of universes, and if so, how? Susskind doubts that changes are incremental. Are there universes that produce large numbers of other universes, given that there are no obvious selection benefits to having fewer offspring? As Susskind says, we see no mechanism to cause competition for resources. Are we in a produced universe, a producing universe, or both? If our universe is a producer, do miscellaneous black holes each produce new universes? Well, according to Susskind, they don't: the production mechanism he suspects is dominant is the cloning of space due to the metastability of the vacuum.

I think it helps to remind ourselves that if there is a large system of pretty much random entitites, that system will be dominated by the biggest ones. If time exists, that system will soon be dominated by not just the biggest, but the most stable and longest-lived ones. And those objects that produce, get produced, or are reproducing (or even better, reproducing in a manner than permits improvements) have a huge advantage. That applies to the Earth's biosphere, and presumably it applies to Reality as a whole.

Susskind discusses the "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this version, when there is a random choice of polarizations for a particle (or a random choice of which slit a photon traveled through), both possibilities actually occur, but in different aspects of reality! That works mathematically, although it does produce a truly huge number of alternate realities. Susskind does say that this is a little like the huge number of alternate realities of the cosmic landscape. But there is a difference which he admits. The many-worlds alternatives all have the same physical laws, while the cosmic landscape does not.

The book includes a very good discussion of the question about possible information loss in a black hole. Stephen Hawking used to argue that such an information loss actually occurs. Susskind and `t Hooft argued that information has to be conserved, and that it must somehow be stored outside the black hole, and Hawking now has conceded this point. And we also learn about black hole complimentarity, which helps explain all this by making it clear that information has no definite location in space.

I truly enjoyed this book, and I strongly recommend it. Read more ›

52 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Folks, its about physics, not theology. Given that, it is a great book. May 3, 2006

By R. Kaiser

Format:Hardcover

I a bit mystified as to why so many book reviews center around God. This is a book about physics, about using the scientific method to find out how our universe works. Indeed, it even discusses our latest tentative views about many possible universes (an infinite number of them?) might work.

This book does touch on religion at one major point. Most traditional theists, including Jews, Christians and Muslims, assume that this is the only possible universe, created by God. Modern day science - which physicists fully admit is incomplete - shows that our particular universe has a number of constants, a change of which would likely make life as we know it impossible. This has been seized upon by theists as proof of God's existence and creation of the universe. Unfortunately, this is both bad science and bad theology. I don't have time to fully explain why, but I can summarize the problem: It is a "God of the Gaps" argument, which makes God smaller and more inconsequential with every subsequent discovery.

As for the actual physics content of the book, it is great. It is not meant to focus on string theory alone (for that see "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene), but it does discuss string theory in some detail, with useful diagrams. Susskind also discusses cosmology, branes, M-theory and other related ideas.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Mostly an unconvincing justification of string theory June 22, 2009

By Dennis Littrell HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The first thing to note is Professor Susskind's insistence on using 14 billion years as the time since the Big Bang whereas most authorities today give 13.7 billion years. That of course is a minor point. More troubling is Susskind's unconvincing and quixotic support of the anthropic principle in cosmology. He characterizes the principle as "really shorthand for a much richer set of concepts that I will make clear in the chapters that follow." (p. 7)

Unfortunately--perhaps revealing the poverty of my discernment--after reading nearly four hundred pages of rather dense text I was not able to appreciate his "richer set of concepts." What I do know is that "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" (title of John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler's book from 1986), which I like to call the "anthropic cosmological fallacy," is really a kind of mystical expression that declares we are here only because of a miraculous series of events or conditions, when in fact we are here precisely because we are the sort of creatures that those events and conditions allow.

A better way to state the cosmological anthropic principle is simply this: if things in the universe were not as they are we would not be here. This avoids the unfortunate suggestion that somehow we cause the universe to be the way it is. We cause nothing. We are a result--an example--of what is possible considering the way the universe is. Notice "a" result, "an" example. Other beings might be here if the laws were different.

On page 363 Susskind writes that the anthropic principle "provides marvelous explanatory power for questions like, why is the cosmological constant small?" But this is not so. It happens that a small cosmological constant is compatible with a universe that allows life as we know it to exist.... Again there is no causation, and life itself provides no explanation for a small cosmological constant. If aphids appear in your garden we can say that they would not appear in your garden if you grew cacti instead of vegetables. This does not mean that the growing of vegetables caused the existence of aphids. It merely says that of all the places that aphids could exist, your vegetable garden is one of them.

In the glossary Susskind defines the anthropic principle as "The principle that requires the laws of nature to be consistent with the existence of intelligent life." If we turn this around and say that "the physical characteristics of intelligent life must be consistent with the laws of nature," we can better see the direction of causality and why most physicists consider the anthropic principle to be vacuous.

It would help a lot if Susskind and others when they use phrases such as "for life to develop" to include the left-out qualification "for life to develop AS WE KNOW IT." That way they will be reminded that all this "fine-tuning"(a phrase that implies a fine-tuner, by the way) they are raving about is just an after-the-fact projection of an anthropomorphic perspective.

Another problem I had with this book is Susskind's unrelenting endorsement of string theory as something proven and true, as something "discovered." Also annoying is his answer to the fact that string theory has no--zero--experimental support: namely that experimental support isn't really necessary. See especially Chapter Nine "On Our Own?" in which he speculates on whether the Standard Model in particle physics (and of course string theory) could have been discovered without experimental verification. It might be better if Susskind said that he and the others "designed" or "created" string theory instead of saying they "discovered" it, which suggests that string theory is somehow true. A mathematical representation of the world is what they "discovered."

I also don't think that Susskind did a very good job of explaining why we should believe that string theory is an accurate description of our universe. I had the sense of a man trying to support his prodigal son by saying "Trust me he's going to turn out right" despite the fact that he hasn't done anything yet to prove it. "Just see how good-looking he is!" Well string theory may be a beautiful mathematical edifice, but until some beautiful experimental support comes along, it will remain as it objectively is, just one way of describing reality.

Curiously, after all the confident expressions about the truth of string theory, Susskind describes string theory as "our best guess for a theory of nature." (p. 302) A guess!

By the by, Susskind explains that after many years famed physicist Stephen Hawking gave up his heretical idea that information is lost in black holes and came around to agree with Susskind and most physicists that information cannot be lost. What is not mentioned in this book is Hawking's addendum. I suspect it is not mentioned since it amounts to a satire on Susskind's position. What Hawking said was that the information lost in black holes in this part of the "megaverse" would be preserved in other parts in which there are no black holes. In other words, Hawking came up with an argument, like that of Susskind's Landscape, which relied on information from parts of the universe which can never be reached! The salient point is that his statement, like the reality of Susskind's "Landscape," cannot be proven one way or the other

Sometimes we reveal ourselves and our ideas without meaning to. In reference to the idea of supersymmetry, Susskind writes, "...the whole exercise was only a mathematical game, a pure theoretical exploration of a new kind of symmetry that a world--some world not our own--might possess." (p. 241)

Could this be an unconscious but accurate expression of the true nature of string theory? Read more ›