Customer Reviews

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next

5 star:		(94)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

The part of the book I found most interesting was the part which tells how the string theorists were scammed by Nature (or Mathematics). Of course, Smolin doesn't put it exactly like this, but imagine the following conversation.

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.

Okay, I've taken a few liberties here. But according to Smolin's book, string theory did start out looking like a very promising theory. And, like a scam, as it looks less and less promising, it's hard to resist the temptation to throw good money (or research) after bad in the hope of getting something back for your effort. One of the questions Smolin addresses in the rest of the book is why the theoretical physics community has kept with string theory and largely abandoned all the other approaches to quantum gravity. The short answer is that it's hard to admit that you've been scammed. The long answer is much more complicated. Another thing Smolin addresses in the book is other approaches to quantum gravity. And as could be predicted, he gives lots of space to his own approach and too little space to others, especially Alain Connes' non-commutative geometry. But overall, I found it very worthwhile and entertaining, and a good explanation as to how theoretical physics came to be in the state it is today.

I never write reviews for books I buy here although I've read virtually every popular theoretical physics book for sale on amazon; however-- the bizarre negative 'ad hominem' reviews for this book have forced me to say something. I was looking forward immensely to the release, in fact I pre-ordered it, because Lee Smolin's earlier "Life of the cosmos" absolutely captivated me way back when. And I must say, "Trouble with Physics" was so interesting and filled with intelligent ideas I couldn't put it down from the moment I bought it, even reading it while walking home like back when I was in high school...

As stated in the book descriptions above, it reviews the past 30 years of theoretical physics and then concentrates on the fact that little progress has been made in that period towards a 'final theory'. And when you think about it, he's right! The problem of unifying quantum mechanics and relativity is already more than half a century old! And so the book discusses why he thinks string theory has failed, and why physics needs a kind of soul-searching to regain its path, aided by experimental results.
I remember well the 'hype' for string theory a few years ago, it was expected to lead to a theory of everything pretty quickly, which obviously has not happened. I'm assuming the negative reviews of this book are from the string theorists, since there is nothing wrong with the cogency or pertinence of Smolin's arguments. String theorists seem to be oddly over-confident they are on the right path, and Smolin is willing to ask if they are not a bit self-deluded on that count. It does seem like a bit of a rejection of Occam's razor, to be positing multiple dimensions, and a multi-verse, when in the end very little has been truly explained... who knows, in the end?

The last part of the book deals with the sociology of academic physics in university depts., and I must admit is slightly less interesting, and more polemical, than the sections that speculate on what a 'final theory' might look like.
Some of these concepts-- such as the variable speed of light theory, or that relativity may not be the full truth, the huge mystery of the cosmological constant and its explanation, are really heretical and for that reason, immensely entertaining!

So, in conclusion, very enjoyable for the 'layperson' who is not committed to believing in string theory and is willing to open their minds to very intelligent speculation on a final theory.

Fundamental physics has been exceedingly successful for over two centuries. The rapid advances in our understanding of natural laws in the first three quarters of the 20th century were just as breathtaking as those in microchips or hard drives in the last. But this progress came to a screeching halt 30 years ago. There has been no real progress since the establishment of the standard model.

To observers outside of the physics community, this fact is far from obvious. Theorists in fundamental physics continue to make announcements on new ideas and results. Books are written and TV shows are made to trumpet the progress in string theory. Many models based on string theory are taken and marketed as facts.

As years and decades go by and waves of string theory "predictions" are repeatedly superceded by new, incompatible ones, doubts begin to grow in the minds of knowledgeable outsiders. How can a "theory of everything" that completely describes an "elegant universe" keep contradicting itself on issues as basic as the dimensionality of spacetime? How can the string theorists be so sure of what happens at 10^19 GeV while being totally silent on the physics just beyond the standard model at 10^3 GeV? How can 30 years go by and nothing in particle physics theory is remotely Nobel-worthy? How can the two most important experimental results (non-zero neutrino masses and a positive cosmological constant) catch string theory by such surprise?

Inquiries regarding these and many other suspicious signs are stonewalled by string theorists. The person who raises the issue is inevitably called ignorant, stupid, malicious, anti-science or all of the above. There are just too many beautiful results in string theory to be explained by coincidence, we are told. String theory is just too vast and too deep for human to comprehend easily, they assure us. Trust us, they say, this is not a case of "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it".

But they did not address any of the questions. Worse, the list of questions grows longer by the year. Is the universe a 4-dimensional brane floating in the extra dimensions or a glorious 10-(should it be 11 now?)dimensional spacetime with 6 of the dimensions curling up? Why 6 and not, say, 7? If there are countless numbers of ways to curl up the extra dimensions, does each way correspond to a string universe? All these universes cannot be real at the same time, can they?

As the string story gets stretched thinner and thinner, so is its credibility. After it became increasingly clear that string theory would never be capable of making any meaningful predictions, the final straw, for many objective observers, finally fell when a large faction of string community pushed for the wholesale adoption of the Cosmic Anthropic Principle, an erstwhile anathema of modern science. String theory is too important, they claimed, to be bounded by conventional scientific principles, very much the same way in which Envon executives claimed their business to be too innovative to be understood with conventional accounting methods.

Just like the couragous independent analyst who started to question Enron's business practice a year before its ultimate collapse, Lee Smolin (along with Peter Woit) provides a stinging early indictment of the self-propelling enterprise that is string. You will find answers to or at least detailed descriptions of all the aforementioned questions and much more.

To me personally, the biggest surprise came when Smolin exposed the fraudulent proclamation of major achievements in string theory: the finiteness of its perturbative series, the S-duality, the AdS/CFT duality, the derivation of the classical general relativity equation and the computation of black hole entropy. Despite early misgiving about some shaky premises of string theory, I had nonetheless admired my string colleagues for their unparallelled breakthroughs. It turns out that these breakthroughs are nothing more than unproven hunches that somehow became the foundation and justification for decades of dominance over particle physics along with tens of thousands of self-congratulating publications. And you call this a theory more important than science itself? Shame on you!

After giving excellent diagnosis and prognosis on how sick fundamental theoretical physics has become, Smolin uses the final third of his book to prescribe a remedy. Here his arguments falter a bit. He advocates shifting emphasis away from calculation to philosophical deliberation, but with the exception of Einstein's General Relativity, physics has never achieved significant advance through abstract philosophical pursuit. The key to salvation from 30 years of wild goose chase lies in new experiments. Fortunately, the LHC will be operational soon and a new generation of physicists will have something real to work on. With some luck, string theorists will find themselves superceded by old fashion science within the next few years, and the readers of this book will understand why it is such a good riddance.

I have a PhD in theoretical physics so this can be regarded as an insider's review. But before that I need to digress a bit...

The other day I was watching a re-run of the BBC "science" program "Parallel Universe" on TV and I found myself so furious about what's being shown that I shook my head repeatedly and even cursed at the TV more than a few times. The reasons I was furious are:

1. The utterly shameless (to the point of immoral) promotion by string theorists (Kaku, Rendall and the usual suspects) of string theory as the Theory of Everything that explains everything (including the Big Bang!), despite the fact that string theory explains precisely NOTHING in REALITY (the "explanations" only work inside the fantasy worlds of string theorists).

2. The presentation of the outrageous fantasies and speculations of string theorists as scientific facts. This is especially unforgivable, because a respectable media company like BBC has the responsibility to clearly distinguish between fact and speculation in their science programs. It's like showing a science program on modern medicine and then interviewing witch doctors as though they're the authorities!

3. The air of superiority, arrogance and blindness displayed by string theorists, who seem to think that their utterly unproven (and unprovable) theory is absolutely correct and nothing can contradict it, not even reality itself. And if reality doesn't seem to fit their mathematics (e.g. there is ZERO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE of 11 dimensions, branes, parallel universes and ANYTHING that string theory proposes), then reality must be wrong! It is really amazing to me that these seemingly brilliant people (string theorists) have absolutely no intuition in physics, and only blindly followed their mathematics (and string guru's like Ed Witten), even though their mathematics is clearly leading them into dead-end after dead-end after dead-end. Mathematics alone should never be allowed to dictate the directions in theoretical physics. We've seen time and again in the history of physics that when mathematics is allowed to dictate a theory without the checks and balances allowed by physical evidence and intuition, the result is always a dead end. This is a lesson that must be learned.

That's why I'm very glad that this book by Smolin and Not Even Wrong by Woit finally came out. I hope that these books can serve as wake-up calls that would finally lift the wool of mathematical fantasies and speculations that has been pulled over our eyes by string theory for the last 30 years. We have already lost a whole generation of brilliant young physicists to string theory, something must be done now if theoretical physics is to save itself from self destruction in the hands of string theory.

I fully agree with Smolin that if we're to save theoretical physics, we need to nurture more "seers" (thinkers) in physics, who do not follow blindly the fads and fashions in physics, but instead try to examine the very foundation of the whole edifice of theoretical physics in the hope of discovering the physical principles and laws that have been overlooked by all other "craftspeople" (problem solvers) in physics. Let's hope that such seers are already among us and that they will soon lead theoretical physics back to the proper path of discovery and progress, away from the dead-ends that string theory has led us.

Smolin's book "The Trouble With Physics" is a very candid account of what the author percieves to be "wrong" with physics as it is being practiced in today's large research universities. Smolin's writing is clear and matter-of-fact. Although he makes his opinions known he is not demeaning to those with whom he disagrees, which makes the polemic all the more effective.

Smolin takes aim at the current diadem of theoretical physics research, String Theory, and attempts to shed light on the true nature and promise of the theory. Smolin's main thesis is that String Theory, and the culture that has grown up around it, is essentially stifling theoretical physics. He shows that string theory has produced no unique, testable predictions and that recent developments in the field suggest that there may be as many as 10^500 different string theories thus making it unlikely that the theory could ever be falsified (for perspective, it is estimated that there are 10^80 atoms in the entire universe). Essentially what this means is that string theory can be taylored to fit any experimental data and, thus, can never be proven wrong.

Smolin argues convincingly that String Theory is not even really a theory in the scientific sense. It is more of "hunch" or a "conjecture". That is, while some of the consequences of the theory have been ascertained, the mathematical structure of the theory remains largely unknown. Furthermore, no one really has any idea of what the overall structure might look like, or how it might be rigorously developed. As a result, hundreds of millions of research dollars are being poured into the elucidation of a project which has made no unique testable predictions, offers no practical applications, and in which only one person (Ed Witten) has made any truly significant advances over the past 15 years.

In spite of all this, what I found most interesting was the pure dysfunctionality of the physics community. The ideological bickering, and the petty struggles for power and prestigue are pretty ironic considering that that hot-shots of the physics community often consider themsleves to have reached the very pinnacle of rationality. It's kind of sad really, and perhaps unavoidable in a situation where certain people are given so much power and authority. But, Smolin believes it can be better than it currently is. I believe that he is right and hope that people in positions of power at our major research universities will take his criticisms to heart.

Lee Smolin is a theoretical physicist, writing about the struggles of theoretical physicists. The horrific troubles that theoretical physicists are having today, Lee reports, is due to one thing: the irreconcilable nature of a quantum reality and a continuum reality. While the theoretical work on the quantum reality culminates in the very successful standard model of particle physics, built on the ideas of quantum mechanics in the form of theories of quantum fields and quantum colors, its particle approach, based on a classification of elementary particles, according to forces of interaction, is severely marred by a glaring failure to account for the most familiar force of interaction, gravity. This is where string theory enters the picture.

Before the completion of the quantum color theory, the concept of string theory was invented by physicists to do what the concept of asymptotic freedom now does more successfully. However, it was soon discovered that string theory unexpectedly offers a way to account for gravity, and this is where the troubles of the physicists really begin to take on unprecedented proportions.

The essence of this trouble, according to Smolin, is not just that the approach of replacing the theoretical concept of elementary particles with a concept of elementary strings has had mixed results, but that many of the physicists who continue to advocate it, seek to justify changes in the long accepted principles of science, in order to do so.

Moreover, given the early success of string theory, as a quantum theory of gravity, and its subsequent success in certain mathematical aspects that indicate that it is clearly self-consistent, and also consistent with the established physics of the past, it has not only engendered the greatest enthusiasm of the most promising young physicists just entering the field, but it has even captured the imagination of the general public, thanks to the efforts of its proponents to make it more accessible.

Consequently, according to Smolin, the effect of the rise of string theory, as an advocated approach to the "unfinished" quantum revolution, embodied in the standard model of particle physics, is to threaten the science of theoretical physics with its social and economic clout. Smolin feels that modern physics is becoming the victim of the phenomenon of "group think" behavior, where the popularity of string theory is more important than its substance, and he warns us of the serious implications of this situation.

In the end, this book is a very well informed, insider's, account of the trouble with physicists, more than an account of the trouble with physics itself, but it's a must read for anyone who cares about this fascinating drama.

This is an incredibly stimulating book by a leading physicist reflecting on the current status of fundamental physics. It is not just about science per se, but also the sociology and even the philosophy of science, seen from the point of view of a practicing physicist who has worked with string theory and who now thinks that it likely is a dead end in terms of "the ultimate theory of everything." Smolin gives a fascinating overview of the recent history of physics, arriving at the conclusion that this is the first generation of physicists in about a couple of centuries who have not managed to produce a major theoretical breakthrough. String theory for Smolin is a brilliant idea that had the unfortunate consequence of taking over the entire field, which resulted in hiring and granting policies that have systematically discouraged other approaches (such as loop quantum gravity, on which Smolin also has worked). The author diagnoses the problem in terms of both philosophy and sociology of science. Philosophically, the current dominant figures of fundamental physics see science itself very differently from the physicists of the generation of Einstein, and this change of vision is not necessarily for the better. Sociologically, we are treated to an in-depth criticism of how granting agencies and departmental hiring practices work, something that will not surprise anyone who has actually been in academia, but that is good to appreciate on the part of the general public. Smolin ends up making some bold suggestions on both how to improve the culture of science and how to get physics unstuck from its current predicament. Even if you are sympathetic to string theory, this is a book well worth reading in order to gain a better perspective on how we do physical science today (despite the fact that the middle part gets quite technical and may not be easy to digest for everyone).

One pattern that has emerged in the history of physics is that successful theories are really unifications of two things that were thought to be different. Copernicus unified stars with the sun; stars were just suns that happened to be very far away. Galileo and Newton unified motion with rest through the concept of inertia. String theory purports to unify quantum mechanics with relativity. The beauty of a good unification is that it provides one simple explanation for seemingly unrelated events.

But Smolin is quick to point out that the history of science is littered with failed unifications that were "too beautiful not to be true." Kepler's original theory was that the orbits of planets were governed by geometric shapes - the platonic solids. It may seem silly to our modern sensibilities to expect that the radius of a planetary orbit should conform to a predetermined geometry, but Kepler was looking for a description of our universe in fundamental properties of mathematics and geometry. That is no different than what we do today looking for Grand Unified Theories of physics.

Kepler's theory was beautiful, but it was wrong. This is also true of modern theories. Particles are composed of two fundamental types: quarks and leptons. One very elegant theory that unified quarks with leptons is called SU(5). It neatly explains all the properties of the standard model, and makes a prediction that was not expected: that protons decay, albeit at a very slow rate. So scientists put a giant swimming pool deep underground to shield it from cosmic rays and watched for proton decay. It should have happened within a couple years, but decades later there has been no proton decay. Smolin writes that he is still shaken decades later that this elegant, beautiful theory is simply wrong.

The next section of the book addresses string theory. It began as extremely elegant beautiful theory. But it rapidly ran into problems, which led to it getting uglier and uglier. The final straw, at least for Smolin, came in 1998 with the discovery of dark energy. This provided experimental proof for a positive cosmological constant, which meant that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Previously all string theories assumed the cosmological constant is either zero or negative. A group of Stanford physicists were able to salvage string theory, but the price was high: it resulted in the creation of a "landscape" of 10^500 different forms of string theory. Instead of being beautiful and elegant, even its proponents held that string theory was now a rube-goldberg device. They held this to be a virtue - looking for beauty in science was uncomfortably theological.

Smolin rejects this approach (and the theological approach). Science may not have to be beautiful but it does have to make testable predictions. The next section of the book discusses alternatives to string theory, including one line of research called "doubly special relativity." Relativity is based on the idea that the speed of light appears the same to all observers. Doubly special relativity means that both the speed of light and the Planck length should appear the same to all observers. The Planck length is a minuscule length much smaller than the tiniest subatomic particle that makes the smallest possible size. The speed of light is a speed limit, so the Planck length is a size minimum. Another competing version of Doubly Special Relativity holds that high energy photons actually can go faster than the speed of light. This can actually be tested because if so, high energy photons from gamma-ray bursts from billions of light years away should arrive about a 1/1000th of a second earlier than lower energy photons.

The final section of the book is about the sociology of science. The gist is that there is no one "scientific method." In the history of science, being falsified never stopped a theory. As one philosopher Smolin quotes put it, when you see a red swan, you look for the person who painted it. In practice, most scientific advances were done be people who cut corners and took shortcuts pursuing their vision. Smolin uses the example of Galileo; the well-trained Jesuits poked holes into his reasoning. But Galileo's vision was correct even if some of arguments were not. Smolin's prescription for the trouble with physics is that we need to find a way to support and encourage the seers in science. They aren't always as technically accomplished as the craftsmen, but they are the ones with the original ideas that advance our understanding of the world.

This book is a MUST read for anyone who believes in the importance of science as a human endeavour.

I have read many popular books on the subjects of cosmology, particle phycics, quantum mechnanics, String theory, etc. Along the way I have read countless books that purport to be for the layman; most start strong covering the topics one would expect (wave-particle duality, the uncertainty principal, special relativity, etc.), but then quickly digress into overly technical explanations that lose most laymen. A great example is Hawking's much-touted A Brief History of Time -- I'm convinced that most people who own this book have never read the whole thing. I know I didn't.

Lee Smolin's book is a rare exception. Here is a brilliant and articulate scientist capable of describing exceptionally complex ideas in very simple terms. He understands exactly where his typical reader's limits of knowledge sit, and works carefully withing those limits. He is also sure to note when he is glossing important details that true practitioners in his field would want to elaborate on. For this alone, Smolin's book is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand the broad issues being explored in today's most advanced physics programs.

More importantly, though, this is a truly COURAGEOUS book.

Smolin states that, while it is a worthwhile endeavour, String theory has unfairly dominated major research programs for too long. For sociological and political reasons, Smolin argues that String theory has squeezed out healthy scientific debate about the "foundational" issues surrounding the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity. Smolin himself is an advocate of quantum gravity, an alternate approach to String theory. It's important to note that Smolin never claims that Loop Quantum Gravity (his favoured approach) is right; his primary point is that it is an axample of an alternate approach that it is worthy of exploration but that receives little attention.

What makes Smolin brave is that he tackles his own professional community. As anyone who has achieved some success in a field will tell you, this takes a lot of guts. And though he presents all of his arguments without malice, there is little doubt that the String theory establishment would not appreciate the way it is characterized in Smolin's book. I can only imagine the nasty response that Smolin has received (actually, there are many blogs that attack Smolin mercilessly -- when not dismissing him as a crack).

Smolin ends his books with a reflection on the general state of science in the US. He paints a bleak picture of a highly "professionalized" discipline which rewards those low-risk research programs most likely to garner large grants, and a culture where reliable technical skill is valued more than risky and innovative ideas.

Even if you disagree with Smolin's assertions (and I am sure that there are many who do), he is compelling writer with interesting things to say.

I am a behavioral scientist with a background in physics and mathematics. Like many others, I much admired Smolin's book, and perhaps in another review I will deal with the book directly. Here, I want to apply my understanding of Smolin's argument to a critique of Lubos Motl's review of Smolin's book, which he entitled "Another postmodern diatribe against modern physics and scientific method". Motl is a very fine string theorist at Harvard, and an interesting person with a great physics blog. I admire him a lot. But, he is wrong in many of his remarks (I cannot evaluate them all, for lack of expertise), and his argument fully supports Smolin's general position on the intellectual social structure of modern physics and the role of "groupthink" in normal science.

Let us begin with the title of Motl's review, "Another postmodern diatribe..." Anyone who knows me will relate that I cannot stand postmodernism. I despise postmodernism. I have nothing for contempt for postmodernism. If a postmodernist ever supported a book I wrote, as did Evelyn Fox Keller of Smolin's book, I would probably conclude that I was dreaming (a particularly cruel nightmare, I might add). But, neither Keller nor any other postmodernist (assuming she is one---I read one book of hers and could not stand it) is in The Trouble with Physics, nor among the blurbs on the book jacket. Smolin does not have a single postmodern strand in his argument. Not a single one. His basic framework is consistent with Thomas Kuhn's "normal science," "paradigm," and "anomaly" framework, and Lord knows, Kuhn could not abide the use of his work by postmodernists. His scientific criterion is basically a combination of Popper (a scientific statement must be refutable, and it must not be accepted until it is tested in a situation where refutation is possible) and Feyerabend (Against Method). Smolin's interpretation of Feyerabend (who has been incorrectly interpreted as postmodern) is in no way postmodern, and highly refreshing and accurate. So much for Motl's title. Not surprisingly, it is all downhill from there.

Motl begins his review not by dealing with Smolin's argument, but by an ad hominem attack on Smolin himself. He says, "Lee often visits us. We smile at each other and Lee is being politely explained why his newest theories can't really work. Lee says that he understands these arguments. Then he returns to a conference or a journalist and repeats that all of his theories have been perfectly proven, while offering even more unusual theories." Now, Smolin is not beyond describing the idiosyncrasies of his string theorist friends, but only late in the book, after his scientific argument is completed. Motl might learn that ad hominem attacks are treated by intelligent scientists as beyond the pale. Motl is an excellent physicist, but he clearly doesn't know how to make an argument: we already have an indefensible title and an ad hominem first paragraph.

Moreover, it is completely false that Smolin claims that "all of his theories have been perfectly proven." Does Motl think we are fools, making such an assertion? If it were not for his stature in string theory, I would have stopped reading his review right there.

A bit later in his remarks, Motl attempts to deflect the criticism from string theory by asserting that "Lee reveals his intense hostility against all of modern physics, not just string theory. He believes that quantum mechanics must be wrong at some fundamental level and many people should try to prove it. He also believes that the attempts to falsify the theory of relativity are among the most important topics to work on." In fact, we know that both quantum mechanics and the general theory are both "wrong" because they are inconsistent with one another and neither separately covers the explanatory ground covered by the other. Motl concludes that "Lee is trying to sell things that could never be bought by the experts because he knows that his lay readers won't be able to tell the difference between a result and a nonsense." It is true that my personal knowledge of string theory is way out of date. If I get time this summer, perhaps I can come up to snuff, or perhaps it really take the year or more that Smolin suggests is needed. Perhaps it is nonsense. But, the fact is that string theory has moved from asserting that the answer is just around the corner to proliferating sui-generis arguments that substitute for real testable, physical theories. Smolin is asking for more resources to be devoted to those who do not operate in the string theory framework. Nor is he arguing that anyone but physicists should be involved in shifting resources (e.g., departmental positions, research funds). Never does he say that Congress or NSF administrators make such decisions. Motl is once again off target.

Motl then claims that "Lee proposes a truly radical thesis that it is wrong for mathematics to play a crucial role in theoretical physics." If I didn't already know that Motl is perfectly happy offering drivel to his readers, I would be astonished at this assertion. Nothing in the book says anything of the kind. Smolin says that physics goes through stages in which deep thinking is critical and others where just crunching the math is extremely productive, as in the case of the standard model. Smolin is correct, I believe. His remarks apply very nicely to the behavioral sciences I know well, including Economics, which is the most mathematical of the behavioral sciences.

Motl : "Smolin... tries to paint the mainstream physics community as a group of evil people." Fact: Smolin says many times that they are, almost to a person, NOT evil people. Rather it is the "sociology" that produces a "groupthink" outcome.

Motl: "he proposes ... that the conclusions [of a paper] must be accepted by everyone if their author is a person of good faith." Fact: Smolin does nothing of the kind. He suggests that highly skilled and well-trained renegades should be supported more than they are.

Motl: "These and other proposals are clearly meant to transform the scientific community to a dogmatic, non-mathematical, and irrational institution with double standards that is similar to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages." Fact: all I can do here is roll my eyes in disbelief that anyone could take this as an implication of Smolin's book. Completely absurd!

I am sorry for spending so much time dumping on poor Motl, who is doubtless as fine as a physicist as he is deplorable as a meta-physicist (i.e., a person capable of thinking clearly and intelligently about where research energy in physics should devoted at the current time). I hope a better defense of string theory appears (I read a rather silly review in Science or Nature a couple of weeks ago), because I really don't want to have to spend my declining years finding the answer out for myself.