Customer Reviews:
 a string of pearls January 6, 2007
J. Schultz (Moretown, VT United States)
10 out of 17 found this review helpful
I love Peter Woit's simple, direct style. It makes this a very easy book to read. Most such books seem to have mountains of fluff between the pearls. "Not Even Wrong" is a simple, elegant string of pearls, without all the distracting fluff.
A very informative book October 28, 2006
Jill Malter (jillmalter@aol.com)
22 out of 31 found this review helpful
I truly enjoyed this book by Peter Woit. I think he does a superb job of explaining many aspects of elementary particle physics in a way that any technically trained person can understand.
Now, what about string theory? Is it in trouble? Is it, um, unraveling? Or getting, um, tied up in knots? Perhaps it is. The author reports on his own doubts about it. An obvious problem is the lack of experimental verification. We see references to this problem from a number of people who have shown terrific insight about the physical world, such as Richard Feynman.
Still, there are some good reasons why many bright people have done so much work with strings. If theories that employ zero-dimensional particles aren't giving good results, it makes sense to try one-dimensional strings. And I think the work that has been done in assessing what such theories would look like has not been in vain. But is it leading in the right direction? I'm not so sure about that. Scientists have to try new things to solve problems. Sometimes, they clearly increase human knowledge, and the progression of advances from the first use of the Lie Group SU(3) by particle physicists in the early 1960s through the development of the Standard Model is a good example of that. Woit explains much of this extremely well.
And, of course, sometimes, new ideas do not lead anywhere, at least at first. That's what science is all about.
There is some material about how the scientific community operates. Do scientific fads get established, and if so does all this retard progress? Well, sure, we're all only human, and sometimes that can happen. But I think that there are always plenty of scientists who are willing to try new ideas, especially if they feel that too many of their colleagues are off on a wild goose chase. So I do not really share some of the author's concerns here. And there is no way I would insult the world's string theorists by comparing their work (or commitment to scholarship) to that of the Modern Language Association!
There is one other point I would like to comment on. Woit does discuss the anthropic principle. This is, at its simplest level, the statement that the universe we live in has to be one in which life could exist. That's obviously true, of course. But it can be extended to imply that there have been (or are, or could be) a vast multitude of other universes or realities with other properties, many of which could not support creatures such as ourselves. And I think this is quite fair. It is reasonable philosophically as well. If we regard all of Reality as the Universe since the Big Bang, we are making a rather provincial claim that Reality is confined to the products of the Big Bang, an event which occurred less than 20 billion years ago (the present best estimate is around 13.5 billion years). The Earth is over 4 billion years old, so this best estimate is considerably less than 4 times the age of our planet! I think it is at least as reasonable to hypothesize that there may be much more to Reality than that!
Woit complains that some of the references to the anthropic principle simply make excuses for the lack of predictive power of string theory. And that may get some people to think that the anthropic principle is some sort of cop-out, like invoking Gods or Goddesses to explain why the parameters we see have the values they do. But that would be unfair. It really does not advance Science to simply give up, ascribing the nature of the Universe to the whims of an inscrutable Deity. But it is a scientific question to ask if some physical parameter is constrained to have the value it does or can have (or could have had) some other value. It might well be that scientists will conclude that some of these parameters appear to have arbitrary values. That could lead to a search for mechanisms that might vary these parameters. And that in turn might even lead to the discovery of some mechanisms that might explain some of this. So I think Woit's reaction to the anthropic principle may be unnecessarily harsh.
In spite of my occasional disagreements with the author's reactions to the state of particle physics today, I highly recommend this book.
Not Even Wrong is right June 21, 2007
M. Page (Renton, WA, USA)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
"Not Even Wrong". This phrase originates with Pauli, who applied it scathingly to any theory that had to be taken on faith because it was not falsifiable by experiment. Peter Woit employs the phrase to describe supersymmetric string theory, which is currently all the rage. Fighting words indeed!
I'm a qualified theoretical physicist, no longer practicing. For many years, I heartily supported the efforts of string theorists to achieve either a further illumination of the standard model or a synthesis of general relativity and quantum mechanics. I am sad that they have really achieved neither. Perhaps one day they will achieve something. I still wish them every success.
But the string community (or any other scientific group) cannot be allowed to turn their chosen approach into a fad, a cult, a religion or - worst - an inquisition. That might be sociologically amusing if it weren't so pernicious for physics and physicists. The effect is that physics departments become the monopoly of self-perpetuating, self-congratulating clans of homogenous thinkers. (Lee Smolin uses the psychological term "groupthink".) Young physicists are informed that string theory "is the only game in town". Sign up for it or go away.
Historically, scientists have countered our natural human hubris to believe whatever we think in two ways. One is by challenges from fellow scientists, who invent new theories, at odds in large or small ways with the standard thinking. The other is by nature, whose measured phenomena often contradict established theories. Of course, in the physical sciences, experimental evidence always holds the trump card over human speculation.
String theory is currently in an unfortunate place. There is no imminent experiment that could bring it into contest with nature. And, because of the iron curtain within which the string community seems to have walled itself, there is little contact between the adherents of string theory and their potential human challengers. Woit's book opens a channel of dissent, which can only be healthy for physics, both as a science and as an academic career.
In summary then, this book makes strong points about the current "unscientific" state of string theory, ones that need to be publicly and vociferously stated. Woit speaks out firmly and professionally, with specific, well-reasoned arguments and some occasional passion.
To point out that an emperor has no clothes takes no courage for a small, innocent child. However, it takes bravery for a professional to point out the same thing, with full knowledge of the impact that his iconoclasm might have. I admire Woit for standing up in print for what he believes.
Of course, like any scientist, Woit may be right or wrong. Time will tell. But it is chilling that, because his book challenged the entrenched orthodoxy, Woit had such difficulty in getting it published,. That fact alone, ironically, means that the book's publication is most timely indeed. And I very much enjoyed reading it.
The emperor has no clothes June 4, 2008
M. Wang (CT United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am writing this blurb in reply to Lubos Motl's (you guess it, another String practitioner whose livelihood is being threatened by this book) comment.
The fact that Peter Woit runs a blog critical of String only shows that he is consistent with his opinions. It should shock any impartial observer that in the eye of String practitioners--Lubos Motl being by no means exceptional among String people--this somehow automatically qualifies Woit and his readers as "crackpots". But what is even more shocking is the comparison to William Dembski's ID (Intelligent Design) blog, because String itself actually provides the perfect analogy to ID.
Let me elaborate. At the height of the recent Pennsylvania ID trial, many education experts came forward to defend the theory of Evolution. One of the hotly debated issues was the definition of a "theory" in science. The ID people, including Mr. George W the Decider, have argued repeatedly that, since Evolution is just a theory, other theories such as ID deserve at least some mention in the classrooms. The defenders of Evolution rely on the rebuttal that a theory in science actually means something that provides the best framework to explain a multitude of independent observations or experimental results and therefore has been accepted by scientific community at large. This, of course, is a lie. String has been paraded as a "theory" in every physics department for over two decades, and yet not only has it produced no testable prediction but it will almost certainly never be able to do so. This puts String squarely in the company of ID. Furthermore, just like ID has morphed constantly, free of the constraint of experimental confirmation, String has changed constantly ever since its inception. In other words, not only does String produce untestable predictions, but these predictions also change from year to year, often dramatically and in a mutually contradictive way. (Have they settled on the dimensionality of space-time yet? Is it 26, 10, 11, or all of the above?)
Other similarities exist, chief among them the religious ferver driving both groups to influence popular opinions and police dissenting thoughts, as exemplified by Lubos Motl's criticism of this book. But there is one big difference between String and ID. The String practitioners are insiders of the science community. They hire their own and make sure String-related papers get published. When a group dominates the peer-review process, it controls the career of every physicist in related fields. It then gains the power to influence, bribe, coerce and intimidate.
Of the five purported String supporters in general physics cited by Motl, I have not worked with Gell-Mann or Hawking, so I don't know what their excuses are (or if they actually need one, since String people tend to misrepresent general enthusiasm for high-energy theories as specific support for String). Prof. Weinberg is the head of a large String group even though he did not publish many real String papers himself. I would certainly count him in the String camp. Dr. Randall and Dr. Arkani-Hamid both took advantage of String referee's eagerness to find supporting work and padded their publication counts with a series of well-publicized "String-Phenomenology" (an oxymoron) papers, thus can hardly be called disinterested third parties either.
The rest of Motl's criticism can be condensed into two simple arguments. The first is that the author does not know details in String as well as he does. This is probably correct technically, particularly in light of the freely changing nature of String's "conclusions". But the core message (as well as the title) of the book is not that String gets the details wrong but that String has no details that can be proven wrong (or right). In this sense, Motl's straw-man argument is irrelevant.
The second point Motl made is, "The problematic statement that string theory makes no prediction is repeated hundreds of times, and in many particular contexts, such a statement becomes not only boring but also patently false." But Motl did not offer any justification why that statement is false. He simply proceeded to throw out more buzzwords and correct more details. One has to conclude that these buzzwords are nothing more than smoke screens meant to obscure the fact no justification could possibly be offered for his claim.
String is a unique phenomenon. It is the most "successful" pseudo science in modern history. Its catalyst is the unprecedented absence of real experimental input in high-energy physics during the past 30 years. Like a cancer, it turns otherwise worthy members of a formerly proud body into the self-promoting endlessly-propagating automatons sucking all resources dry. Later generations of historians of science will surely make their careers studying this bizarre event. Yet it has not begun. This book is not perfect, but as the first formal effort to recognize and document this historical phenomenon, it is a must read.
Why the string theory knot is not yet untied March 20, 2007
Elezer Puglia Jr. (Zug, Switzerland)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book achieves one of the most impressive displays of the strength of the scientific method, and how the various string theories failed to stand to its test - so far, at least. The book's title could not be more appropriate: it correctly describes that all of the variations of string theories presented so far fail miserably to stand to the stricter tests of the scientific method, particularly the ability to make verifiable predictions. If you are impressed with string theory and the possibility that it might embody the long searched Theory Of Everything (TOE), then read this book - and think twice.
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