The Trouble With Physics Smolin Discusion

The Trouble with Physics - The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next
Manifesto Challenge: Developing a Capable Population
Speakers
Professor Lee Smolin

Theoretical Physicist
Professor Michael Duff

Abdus Salam Professor of Theoretical Physics
Professor Nancy Cartwright

Philosopher of Science and Sociology
Chaired by:
Professor Chris Isham

Professor of Theoretical Physics, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College
Date: Venue:
5th March 2007 RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ
NB
This is an unedited transcript of the event. Whilst every effort is made to ensure accuracy there may be phonetic or other errors depending on inevitable variations in recording quality. Please do contact us to point out any errors, which we will endeavour to correct. To reproduce any part of this transcript in any form please contact RSA Lectures Office at lectures@rsa.org.uk or +44(0)20 7451 6868 The views expressed are not necessarily those of the RSA or its Trustees.
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RSA | The Trouble with Physics - The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next | 5th March 2007
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Matthew Taylor: Good evening. Im Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA and Id like to welcome you to the RSA this evening. Im the boring speaker before all the interesting speakers. At the end of the event, if you could complete your feedback questionnaire and hand it back to a member of RSA staff or reception, wed be very grateful to you. Like most RSA events this session is being broadcast live on our website. An edited audio file and a transcript will be available on our website in a few days time. This evenings lecture has been organised by the RSA with the Royal Institution and in association with Penguin Books. We have an expert panel to discuss The Trouble with Physics The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of the Science and what comes next. Professor Lee Smolins book is published today by Penguin UK. It will be on sale after the lecture and Professor Smolin has kindly agreed to sign copies. Our Chair for this evening who will introduce Lee and other speakers more fully, is Professor Chris Isham, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College. So will you please join me in welcoming Chris, Lee, and our distinguished panel. Thank you. Professor Chris Isham: Well ladies and gentlemen, good evening. The organisers have asked me to just give a little bit of the scientific background to the debate this evening. But first so you know whos who, let me introduce briefly the people on the platform. Nearest to me in the red corner is Lee Smolin wholl be presenting the case. And then next to him on the right is Mike Duff, wholl be in the blue corner, whos defending the case. Right at the very end will be Nancy Cartwright whos a Philosopher of Science and Sociology. So thats how were going to do things.
Ive been asked to tell you also that this particular meeting runs on a bit later than usual so it finishes at 7.45. So dont get worried if you think were over running because we may be. So let me start by saying that 40 years ago (I hate to say it, but its true) I was a PhD student at Imperial College doing Theoretical Physics. And in those days the whole structure of the subject was very different to what it does today. There basically were two different types of Theoretical Physics; people did two groups. The bigger group by far were people doing Particle Physics to which all three of us belonged actually, and then there was a much smaller group of people who were doing general relativity; Einsteins Theory of Curve, Space and Time. These are two quite different subjects and by and large the people who worked in these fields had quite different educations, they didnt talk to each other very much. And thats fine because everybody did what they had to do. They got funded for it. But then a very small number of people started to ask how could these two things be brought together? When I was a student I got very interested in this, but it was a long time ago, and very few people then did this subject. And in fact it was totally and completely unjustified because there was no data whatsoever. It was impossible either to falsify or verify the theory or do anything. There was no justification whatsoever except it was a fascinating problem, and thats why people began to work on it. Now because of this division, the training even theoretical physicists had in those days, very rapidly the subject split into two schools. There was the school who came from a particles physics background, like we did, who basically worked in four dimensions, thats called the (inaudible). And then the relativists preferred to work in three dimensions, and thats called the (inaudible). formism. Now you might think, well, four or three dimensions, whats the difference. But
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in fact, the bifurcation was enormous between these schools, and there used to be terrible arguments. I was a very young and impressionable academic in 1970. The first time ever we had a conference where I was then working on quantum gravity, and there were relativists there and particle physicists there. And at one point one of the four dimensional people who was a very distinguished man, went up to one three dimensional person, like this (inaudible).. So I hope that doesnt happen this evening! But like I said before, dont be too bland either because people (inaudible). . So these two schools developed and evolved over the years. And the four dimensional people became ten dimensional people and the ten dimensional people again and thats now a school of superstring, the M-theory, the subject really were talking about this evening. That was a big major development and is the major part of theoretical physics in the subject. The other half, the (inaudible) people, evolved into whats now become called loop quantum gravity. Lee was one of the founders of that subject, and Mike has made some very major contributions to string theories, so you have the two different people here. Now in the course of my career, which does go back a long way I have to admit now, I often used to wonder what we were doing. We were doing quantum gravity because ordinary physics, you have three things really. At least I was thinking this way. Youve got the data from the real world. Youve got the mathematics and you had the philosophy. And these three things stayed kind of locked together. If one of them is missing, the whole thing becomes a bit haywire and this is in fact what happened because we had all the mathematics and the concepts but no data. Now under those circumstances you might think, well, what do scientists actually do. And the answer, they simply give vent to
their philosophical and scientific prejudices; its more or less true. Now as I got older and I get more senior because I began to sit on selection panels for things. An interesting question arises. How do you judge whether the piece of work in quantum gravity is good or bad? Because if there is no data, if you cant falsify it, if theres no good justification for doing it, it sets a fascinating problem. Why is it good? Why is it bad? I decided that really, its like a composer who writes a piece of music. If its a nice tune, everybody likes it. They all sing the same tune for a while and you become known. And to some extent, I think Lee will perhaps pick up this point, is that I saw what was happening on the gravity studies. Now for people like Mike or Lee and I who are well established in our careers, it doesnt matter. But for young people actually this can be a big problem. Because if one particular tune becomes so popular that everybody sings nothing but that, the people who sing the discord, as it were, may eventually be run out of funding, which I think is one aspect Lees going to say. And this is a real problem in my opinion. Its a problem in any science if this happens. Now this evenings debate is not actually about physics. I dont imagine were going to have an in-depth discussion of string theory. Its really about the sociology of science and how it works. So let me start off by introducing Lee Smolin. Each speaker will speak for exactly 20 minutes, and I shall cut them off. So Lee Smolin will speak first to the title of his book, which is The Trouble with Physics. Lee. Professor Lee Smolin: Well, thank you very much Chris. I also want to thank very much Michael Duff for doing this, which is a very generous and courageous thing to do. Not everybody said yes to this invitation. Im very happy and honoured that he did. And Im very honoured that Nancy Cartwright who is a very eminent and
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influential philosopher agreed to do this. I hope we live up to the expectations. As Chris said, this is not about physics, but it is about physics both, and thats part of the lesson. I want to start off in saying this book has been read. It came out first in the United States and its been mis-read and not read, and its been characterised. For example, as being, against string theory almost always by people who when theyre asked, turn out not to have read it. The book is not against string theory. Its not for or against any particular development. What is the book really about? The key to the book for me is a quotation from a Brazilian American philosopher, Roberto Mangabeira Unger who starts his latest book, and Im just going to quote it and then focus in from it by saying In what kind of world and for what kind of thought is time real, history open and novelty possible? In what kind of world and for what kind of thought does it make sense for a human being to look for trouble rather than to try to stay out of trouble? So thats what the book is about. And let me start there are really three key points or three key steps. First, the concern is how science works and there is a view of what science is and how science works, which I present. And the key question that Im interested in is, the role of disagreement and controversy and how it is that in any important step forward in science, there is a period of disagreement, controversy, debate, sometimes friendly, sometimes not friendly. Of course thats like every domain of human life and endeavour, but in science theres something unusual which is there is some process by which we go from that state of debate and controversy, to a state of consensus. And how does that happen? Im interested in that. Im not a professional philosopher or sociologist, but that was the concern that I started with and that really is what the book is about. The view that I develop is that we face the unknown in science. There are for any interesting question, as Chris explained, there
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in the questions of interested theoretical physicists now, but its always been the case. There are diverging points of view. Different experts, different well-trained people think different parts of the question are more important. They ask the question in different ways. Theyre influenced by different philosophical traditions and ideas and there are divergent approaches, and thats healthy. Thats the main message of the book. In fact thats why I asked to make these presentations in England of the book. I asked to have them in the form of discussion and debate because thats the point of the book, is the discussion and disagreement amongst experts is essential. Because nobody knows what is the right thing. However whats different about science is that when you become a scientist, you sign on to an ethic and an ethic that (this is my view now) in which you acknowledge that the community and not yourself is the ultimate judge of whats correct. And that the community consisting of individuals who are sure of themselves and confident will still come to agree when theyre forced to it, kicking and screaming by the evidence. And what you agree to by becoming a scientist is to be governed by rational argument from the evidence. You agree to be open to changing your mind. And from time to time consensus does form around a new idea, a new theory, when the evidence and rational argument from the evidence forces us to that. And almost always that has to do with experiment. This view of science requires that in the absence of being forced to consensus, we should encourage the widest possible among and Im not talking about amateurs and quacks and so forth who really dont play a role. Im talking about in the scientific community of well trained credential people, we should do whatever we can to encourage the intellectual freedom, independence, in the widest range. Even if I think if Im sure that my research programme is right, it helps my research programme to have very good people who have contrary views and
research programmes. And we should only come to consensus when were forced to it. But that happens often enough because not only are theorists clever, but experimentalists are even cleverer. Thats the first thesis. Now in this light, what is our situation in fundamental physics? Well, Chris outlined it. Let me very quickly say because part of this book is an examination into our present strange situation in fundamental physics, so thisll be very telegraphic. First we face severe unsolved problems completing the unification, the revolution that Einstein started at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the questions are to make sense of quantum mechanics, to bring together gravity and relativity in quantum mechanics, which is the problem of quantum gravity. Theres a problem of explaining the structure of the laws that we have already, that we understand. For example, theres a standard model of particle physics and there are annoying, incomprehensible so far, clues from experiments like the dark matter and the dark energy. Now in response to these problems, all of which have been there since before I was an under-graduate student with the exception of the dark energy, there are diverse research programmes and ideas being investigated and thats good. And string theory is one of them, but only one of them. One thing that probably will come up which is about science we dont have time to go into the different research programmes probably and their relative successes and failures it can be said of string theory and it can be said of other research programmes, that it partly has succeeded. There have been great achievements. There have been great discoveries mathematically. There have been great achievements that I admire very much and we all admire in the development of string theory, of (inaudible)) models, of Topos theory, of loop quantum gravity, of dynamical triangulations, of cause or set theory and Technicolor, etc; the list goes on.
But none has fully succeeded to do two things that any theory must do. One of them is make precise falsifiable predictions and this is the legacy of Karl Popper from London, falsifiability, by which the theory confronts experiment and confronts it directly. That is if the prediction thats on the table is not obtained in the experiment, that theory must be wrong. And its very interesting why that hasnt happened. The second is also none has a completely coherent and convincing formulation starting from a principle and then expressing itself in elegant mathematics the way that general relativity has. Broadly speaking, some approaches take developments from particle physics more seriously as a starting point and use the ways of thinking in methods and string theory is one of them. And others take the great lesson of general relativity as the starting point. To my mind, and this will come up, the great lesson of general relativity is an idea we call background independence. That is there is first of all the geometry of space as was long thought; is not fixed, is not absolute, is not eternal. Its just something that evolves along with everything else. Theres nothing in the formulation of the laws of physics that should be fixed and absolute and not be part of a network of relations which is dynamical. This view that Im expounding, we learn from general relativity and we call it background independence. Philosophers call it relationalism. The opposing tradition is called background dependence, and its that you set off what is the geometry and which one wants to study things moving. What is the history of the universe and which one then wants to study things against that background. And for better or worse, so far string theory is formulated that way although I have spent many years, and other people have spent many years trying to transfer string theory to the first kind of theory. But theres this disjunction between background independence and background dependence and thats related to the disjunction that
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Chris talked about between three dimensions and four dimensions. Now so far there is no direct contact with experiment for any of these developments. Some of these developments do make general expectations not from predictions of the kind I talked about, but general expectations for upcoming experiments. There is the large Hadron collider coming online in Geneva, and if you believe that string theory is a deep insight into nature, then theres a package deal that comes along with that which includes a constraint on the theory called super symmetry, and includes a belief in six or seven extra dimensions. And if youre very optimistic, you believe that evidence for that, for either one or both of those things will be seen at the large Hadron collider. And it may be. But since string theory nor any of the other programmes makes a specific prediction for exactly where and how these features will be realised, the outcome will be crucial for the development of science but it will not tell us whether string theory is true or not, whether (inaudible) models are true or not, etc. There are other experiments also coming online which really probe whether the principles of the special theory of relativity are true or need modification when quantum mechanics and gravity meet. And these are also very important experiments. Theyve been going on actually for billions of years and these are experiments where light may be propagating for billions of years in very small effects from quantum geometry; quantum gravity may be accumulating in the passages and interactions of these particles which then can be teased out when theyre detected by satellites in orbit on earth or by detectors on earth. And theres several very important experiments that test crucial principles there. But we may learn. We will learn something important from those experiments. But none of the theories we have in front of us will be tested up or down from them. So that was my second point. Thats a rough sketch of the situation. The rest is wisdom, good judgements, things that eminent
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people like Chris have, and I dont have, but Im going to try. In some sense the book is an attempt to realise the ambition of that quotation from Roberto Unger that I read. Thats hovering there always in the background (I hope it stays there) about the desire for a world thats open in which time is real and progress is real. But this is not post-modernism. This is post postmodernism. But whats the device? Some of it is obvious. If after many years of exploration an idea has been very deeply explored by hundreds of very good people (and this applies not just to string theory but also some of the other research programmes Ive worked on) and it has failed in the two aspects that Ive said, to either have a complete coherent formulation or to make up and down predictions. We havent wasted our time. Let nobody say that weve wasted our time or the work has not been brilliant or interesting or compelling. But most likely its not the complete truth. Maybe even its completely off track. So therefore the most important thing, and to mirror again some things Chris says, is to organise science in the academy in such a way that the audacity and the independence and the courage of a young person who will come and propose the right direction and the right idea, whether it grows out of string theory or grows out of the loop quantum gravity or does not, there will be (Im confident) some person maybe one of us older people, but if history is a guide, more likely somebody younger, who will propose what turns out to be the right route. And the most important thing is to work in a field which is open to that and which invites that. Thats the key thing. Everything else that is in way of advice is to enable that. One way to say that, there is a metaphor that I heard about from an economist, Eric Weinberg, after I wrote the book or it would be in the book, but Ill close with this. We may talk about a problem in string theory and other theories called the
landscape, and this is the way he proposes to think of this. Imagine that all the different ideas, good ideas that people could have, are hills in a complicated mountainous landscape. And the closer an idea is to working, the higher the hill. What were seeking is maybe not the summit, maybe there isnt a summit. But were seeking the best hill, the highest mountain that we can get to. And I dont need to be committed to whether theres an absolute best theory or final theory. Thats irrelevant. But there are higher and lower summits. And the whole scene is shrouded in fog, so we cant look and see how where we are compares to other places on the landscape. So then there are different kinds of scientists. Most of us, and mostly I include myself in this, are hill climbers. Were well trained. Were clever. We got advanced because we were clever kids. You put us down on a slope, we figure out which way is up and we go there. And thats what most of professional science is and thats what most of it should be because most professional science is not trying to solve these deep foundational issues such as the nature of space and time or quantum theory. Unaccountably there are a few who go down when the rest of us go up, and these Eric Weinberg calls valley crossers. They will go down on their own to get away from everybody else simply because they have a mirage in their mind. Many of them get lost, but what they do for science is they find the other hills and they find new ways up. Of course, this is a metaphor that comes also from evolutionary biology where the metaphor of the landscape in physics comes originally. So the message is most of us are hill climbers. Im a hill climber. Sometimes I jump around and help climb one hill and then I jump around to another hill, but Im basically a hill climber. The hills that I climb were not discovered by me. They were discovered by people with the audacity and the verve and the spark to find new hills. And the message is, as wonderful as the work on loop quantum
gravity has been, as wonderful and as admirable as the work on string theory and other approaches has been, what we seem to have discovered is a bunch of hills. And what we have is a bunch of communities of people camped out on the top of the hills saying, My hill is better than your hill reasons. What we need in that situation is to open up science and make sure (its not going to be many people) theres room for those rare people who go down, cross the valleys and find the right hill. And Ill stop there. Thank you. Professor Chris Isham: Well, thank you very much Lee. Thats perfect timing too. Our next speaker is Mike Duff from Imperial College, a colleague of mine for many years. Hes the Abdus Salam Professor there, of Theoretical Physics. As I said earlier, hes made a number of contributions to the field of string theory. Now I asked him for his title just beforehand of this meeting. His title of his talk is What Trouble? Professor Michael Duff: The trouble with physics, ladies and gentlemen is that there is not one Lee Smolin, but two. On the one hand there is the reasonable Lee Smolin who has just spoken to you and with whom I hope to share a drink later this evening. Who can dispute that the ultimate goal of a scientific theory is to make experimentally testable predictions? Who will challenge the need to keep an open mind and listen to unorthodox views? Who can disagree with the assertion that our current understandings only partial and that the ultimate truth is yet to be uncovered? What he has said is so uncontroversial that theres really very little to object to. So were I to respond only to the reasonable Lee Smolin, theres the danger that this debate would degenerate into a bland exchange of truisms. Unfortunately for physics, but fortunate perhaps for those of you whove come along expecting a vigorous debate this
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evening, there is the Lee Smolin who wrote the book The Trouble with Physics which is after all the reason why were all here this evening. And this Lee Smolin is far from reasonable. He has some very unpleasant and more importantly very inaccurate things to say about both string theory as a science and about string theorists as scientists. Lets start with the book cover and I quote As a scientific theory, string theory has been a colossal failure and is dragging down the rest of physics and thats just for starters. In fact many of my string theory colleagues found the book so offensive, believing it to be a gross perversion of the truth that they urged me to dissociate myself from it and refuse to take part in this debate. As Lee acknowledged, not everyone wanted to take part. And part of it is because they view Lee and Peter Woit the author of a similar book attacking string theory, as both making a living off the backs of those who are doing all the hard work. I think it was Yates who said, There never was a dog that praised its fleas but in my opinion eventually there comes a time when the dog has to scratch and thats why I agreed to speak this evening. Moreover these distortions have by now received quite a wide publicity. For example in last weeks Mail on Sunday someone called Harry Ritchie reviewed The Trouble with Physics and repeated without qualification some of the more outrageous claims in the book. And I quote, String theory has made no discernible progress after 20 years. Just a huge amount of un-provable conjecture. Of the hundreds, and let me repeat this carefully, Of the hundreds of research appointments in American universities since 1990, only three have gone to non-stringies. Now I dont mind that journalists like Harry Ritchie are ignorant about string theory. Most people are. Whats irksome however is their propensity to pontificate about it without bothering to check the facts. The no progress claim is simply silly and Ill be describing some progress in just a few minutes. The unPage 8
provable conjecture claim is equally misleading. Conjecture and reputation is a time honoured way to proceed in scientific research. And string theory is no different. Sometimes our conjectures are proved. Sometimes disproved. Sometimes no proof is forthcoming but such a vast amount of circumstantial evidence is accumulated that we adopt the conjectures of working hypothesis until such time as a proof comes along. And by the way how does Harry Ritchie know that the conjectures so far unproved or un-provable. Perhaps hed care to lend me his crystal ball. Finally a couple of phone calls would easily have refuted the only three appointments claim. I spent the years 1999 to 2005 at the University of Michigan and the last two permanent faculty appointments in theoretical physics were both to non string theorist. Multiply that by the dozens of similar departments in the US, and you begin to see what a flagrant misrepresentation the three out of hundreds really is. I might add that its unequally untrue in the UK. My own department is in Imperial College for example, seven out of the last ten faculty reappointments since 1990 were to non string theorists. Of course the Mail on Sunday has never been a paper to allow facts to get in the way of a good story. Where I do agree with Harry Ritchie and indeed with every other reviewer of the book is that it is a venomous attack on string theory, not withstanding the claims of the reasonable Lee Smolin, that it isnt. Now dont get me wrong, if Lee had confined his sociological criticisms to saying that some theorists are arrogant, exclusive, unwilling to listen to orthodox views, then thats fair game. In fact theres probably some truth in there. In fact I'm reminded of the one about the philandering string theorist who when confronted by his wife said, But darling I can explain everything. So thats fair enough. But when Lee conflates sociology
with science and accuses the string theorists of being bad scientists, thats fighting talk. Let me say a little bit about string theory and its successor M-theory. Theoretical physicists like to ask the big questions, how did the universe begin. What are its fundamental constituents. What are the laws of nature that govern those constituents. And the situation we faced at the end of the last century notwithstanding the great success of the standard model of particle physics, and the standard cosmological model in providing partial answers to these questions, was that the two main pillars of 20th century physics, quantum mechanics and Einsteins general theory of relativity were mutually incompatible. Quantum theory deals with the very small atoms, sub atomic particles and the forces between them. General relativity deals with the very large stars, galaxies and gravity, the driving force of the cosmos as a whole. And the dilemma we faced was that on the microscopic scale, Einsteins theory failed to comply with the quantum rules that govern the behaviour of the elementary particles. While on the macroscopic scale, black holes are threatening the very foundations of quantum mechanics. So something big has to give. And this is perhaps a new scientific revolution. But no one said it was going to be easy. Constructing an all embracing theory that unifies gravity and quantum mechanics and goes onto to describe all physical phenomena is probably the most ambitious challenge in the history of science. Finding ways in such a theory, finding ways in which such a theory could be tested empirically will be equally difficult given the fact that the gravitational force is 40 orders of magnitude weaker than the other forces. Nevertheless many physicists believe that this revolution is already under way with the theory of superstrings. As their name suggests, theyre one dimensional string like objects which just like violin strings can vibrate. And each mode of vibration, each note if you like, represents a different elementary particle. So that note would be a cork. That note would
be a (inaudible). this note, a (inaudible). and so on. Now one strange feature of superstrings is they live in a universe with nine space and one time dimensions. Since the world around us appears to have only three space dimensions, the extra six must somehow be curled up to an unobservably small size. Or else rendered invisible in some other way if the theory is to be at all realistic. Fortunately, the equations of string theory admits solutions where that actually happens. And the main reason why theorists are so excited about string theory is that it seems at long last to provide the long dreamed of, consistent quantum theory of gravity. And holds promise of incorporating and extending the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. Now string theorists are the first to admit that the theorys by no means complete. But its constantly undergoing improvement in the light of new discoveries. For example, one of the problems with the form of a theory developed in the 1980s was that there was not one superstring theory, but five. Five mathematically consistent superstrings. Now if one is looking for a unique theory of everything, five theories of everything seems like an embarrassment of riches. In 1995, the theory underwent a revolution when it was realised that these five strings were not different after all, but rather just five corners of a deeper and more profound theory that we now call M-theory. M-theory involves membrane like objects which live not in ten, but eleven spacetime dimensions. For the purposes of tonights debate, Ill often use the word string theory but theyre meant to incorporate M-theory as well. String and M-theory continue to make remarkable theoretical progress. For example, by providing the first microscopic derivation of the black hole entropy formula
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first proposed by Stephen Hawking in the mid 70s. And solving long outstanding theoretical problems such as these, gives us an indication that were on the right track. But as so often happens in science, Mtheory presented new problems of its own. Not least of which is that its equations admit even more solutions than string theory does. And at the moment, we have no idea which one, if any, nature should pick to describe our universe. Theorists are divided on this issue. Some think that when we understand the theory better, we will understand why one unique universe is singled out, thus answering in the negative, Einsteins question, Did God have any choice in creating the universe? Others think that there are indeed many, possibly infinitely many different universes, and we just happen to be living in one of them. The problem of how to choose one universe out of a large possibly infinite number of mathematically possible universes, is sometimes called the landscape problem. And lacking in answers to this problem, the theory is as yet unable to give a definitive smoking gun experimental prediction that would render the theory falsifiable. Of course there are some generic features of string theory like super symmetric particles, extra dimensions, microscopic black holes, cosmic strings. And if were lucky, some of these maybe confirmed at the large Hadron collider due to be switched on in Geneva later this year, or perhaps in the next generation of astrophysical observations. But like Lee, I think (one thing we agree on) I'm doubtful whether the kind of issues we are debating tonight will be resolved anytime soon. Now critics like Lee and Peter Woit say that since youve been working on Mtheory since 1995, its time to give up. Others like myself say its still early days. And theres an important point here that Id like to stress. Lets suppose for the sake of argument, we all
stopped working on string theory tomorrow. Started with a clean sheet of paper, sharpened our pencils and say what do we do now. The landscape problem would not have gone away. The problem of how to choose one physical universe out of a large possibly infinite number of mathematically possible universes, is a problem that any attempt to provide a final theory is going to have to confront. Why do we appear to live in just four spacetime dimensions? Why is the number of fundamental forces for gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force? Why are the elementary particles arranged in three families of (inaudible). These riddles are not unique to string theory. And at the moment, none of the alternative theories has any answer to them. But this is perhaps a good time to pause and ask about the relation between theory and experiment in physics. The image held by many people go something like this. Some theoretical genius thinks up a bright idea in his or her armchair and shouts eureka. The next day they write a paper summarising the theory and suggesting ways of testing it in the laboratory. Shortly afterwards, an experimental colleague performs the experiment, confirms the theory, and the following October, both go to Stockholm to collect their Nobel Prizes. Alas the reality is usually completely different. Theories rarely spring fully formed from the minds of their discoverers. They usually begin with the germ of an idea that needs to be nurtured and nourished and then gradually improved upon by others. And Id like to consider a couple of examples. Lets take black holes. The existence of black holes, objects so dense that not even light can escape, is now well supported by astronomical observation. Particularly from x-ray omission from binary stars. But the theory of black holes goes back to John Mitchell in 1784, and Pierre Le Plas in 1786. They reasoned that there was a critical radius
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below which a massive body would have an escape velocity that exceeds the velocity of light. And that body therefore would be invisible. And this idea was basically correct. But it did not reach theoretical maturity until the arrival of Einsteins general relativity in 1916 and the discovery of what we now call the (inaudible) black hole solution. And this solution was still not taken seriously even by Einstein. Some years pass and then in 1939, Oppenheimer of Manhattan fame, and Schneider showed that after burning up their nuclear fuel, sufficiently massive stars would undergo gravitational collapse and form black holes. But even this work was largely ignored until the observational evidence for black holes started to accumulate in the 1970s. So I find myself in disagreement with Lee when he says in his book, and I quote, When you look back at the history of physics, one thing sticks out. When the right theory is finally proposed, it triumphs quickly. Second example would be quantum entanglement. One of the strangest and the most fascinating physical phenomena is quantum entanglement. The basic problem was set forth in 1935 by Einstein, Padolski and Rosen who pointed out that there was a conflict between quantum theory and local reality, or what Einstein called spooky action at a distance. But it wasnt until 1964, that (inaudible) theorist John Bell came up with an empirically falsifiable prediction. And it was not until 1982 that experimentalist Alan ((Aspey?)) was able to conduct Bells suggested experiment. He verified empirically by the way, that quantum mechanics is right, Einstein was wrong. And local realism has to go out of the window. So once again I find myself in disagreement with Lee when he says in his book, Before the 1970s, theory and experiment had developed hand in hand. New ideas were tested within a few years ten at most.
There are lots of other examples in the history of physics that I have cut short. But there are two morals I think to be drawn from these examples. The first more obvious one is that we frequently have to wait for technology to catch up with the theory. Many theoretical predictions were not confirmed until the arrival of more sophisticated hardware, more powerful telescopes or particle accelerators. The second moral, harder perhaps to grasp but one of vital importance for this evenings debate. Is that it frequently takes a long time for an original theoretical idea to mature to the stage where it can be cast into a smoking gun prediction, that they can test it experimentally. Many confused critics of string theory have declared that unless youre making false viable predictions, you are not doing science. Well, were Mitchell, Le Plas, Einstein, Padolski, Rosen, Oppenheimer, Schneider, not therefore doing science? Well of course they were. Their only problem is that they were ahead of their time. So let me finally then return to the book and why so many string theorists are upset about it. In the chapter Seers versus Craftspeople Lee Smolin divided scientists into two camps. There are the craftspeople who though competent at doing tedious calculations, are merely unimaginative drones doing what others have told them to do. And then there are the seers who have all the real vision and creative genius. Needless to say Lee consigns the entire string community to the dustbin of craftspeople. Page 287, Why are string theorists not seers? Page 290, I can think of no mainstream string theories to us, proposed an original idea about the foundations of quantum theory or the nature of time. Page 287, It does not take much foresight or courage to think about strings. So when Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann, Abdus Salam, Stephen Weinberg, David Gross, all gave up what they were doing in order to study string theory. When
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Fields medallist Michael Ateer and Edward Witten established deep connections between pure mathematics and string theory, and when Stephen Hawking devoted his latest book to M-theory, they were all, according to Lee Smolin, lacking foresight. So little fulfilment is exactly what you get when a lot of highly trained master craftspeople try to do the work of the seer. Who then are the seers? Its not GellMann or Weinberg, Hawking. Well, Lee leaves us in no doubt with a toe curling display of selfaggrandisement, he announces, I think of myself as a seer. To make matters worse, at the end of his book, he devotes some time to condemning racism and sexism and higher education. And when this is all mixed up with attacks on string theory, the reader is left with the impression that practically all the ails of society are to be laid at the feet of string theory. How should one react to such a book? My own reaction is best summed up by an analogy with football. Lets suppose the manager of a football club, I dont know, Watford were to write a book called The Trouble with Football whose cover announces that another club, lets say Manchester United, are as a football team a colossal failure who are dragging down the rest of football. Why? Because although those United players may be scoring all the goals, winning all the trophies, garnering generous sponsorship, theyre merely super fit craftspeople. All the players with real vision and creative genius, the seers, are playing for Watford. And the reason why most of the upcoming young talent wants to play for United rather than Watford is because theyre deluded. How would such a book be received? Well it might sell a few copies as a novelty item. Perhaps the Mail on Sunday would endorse it because they never liked United anyway. But would it persuade discerning football fans? I think the answer is no for the obvious reason. They would say that the only way to get more people to support your club and fewer to support your rivals, and the only way to persuade young talented players to join
your team is not by writing popular books, but by playing the game. And so it is in theoretical physics. The battle for the correct theory will not be won on the bookshelves of WH Smith. Nor even in the debating chamber of the Royal Society for the Arts. The battle will be won on the pages of the scholarly scientific journals or in their modern guise, on the electronic archives on the internet. The way to persuade your scientific colleagues that you have a good theory that is worthy of support is to publish your findings and present the most convincing case you can. If you dont like string theory, the answer is simple. Come up with a better one. The trouble with physics ladies and gentlemen is that Lee Smolin and Peter Woit having lost their case in the court of science, are now trying desperately to win it in the court of popular opinion. Thank you. Professor Chris Isham: Well thank you Mike. I had actually worried before we started this meeting, it might be a little bit bland, everybody agreeing with each other. A great mistake on my part. Now I have great pleasure in introducing our next speaker who I think must have been smiling ironically to herself throughout these two talks. It is Professor Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics. She works professionally in the philosophy and sociology of science. And she is surely better equipped than anybody to comment on whats going on here. Nancy. Professor Nancy Cartwright: Ah, thank you. Chris asked for a title and insisted he would make one up if I didnt give it to him. And then he didnt like my title, so he failed to tell it to you, which is: Physics is conflict. And Ill explain that. The trouble with physics, Lee Smolin tells us is the hegemony of string theory. Young theorists he says, studying the most fundamental laws of nature cannot get a job unless they join the string theory movement. And should they have a job, they cannot get
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tenure. This was the unreasonable Lee Smolin, as he was described. Those who believe in alternative approaches are upgraded, even ridiculed by those in the movement for being foolish, even for being stupid. Alternative work is not discussed nor understood within the string camp. And for the most part, most of the money as well as the bright ambitious young theorists, go to string theory. Whats wrong with that? Well, two things Smolin tells us. First, weve just had the discussion of string theory is not all that it is touted to be Smolin claims. Many of its important punitive successes are promises, not fact. Well now thats a physics, and weve got a physics discussion going on I was asked to supply philosophical context. And the second problem with physics that Smolin talks about is one which is right up the alley of philosophers, something we work on all the time, and thats this that, even if string theory were all its touted to be, this is no way to do physics. Now philosophers with viewpoints like Smolins, argue that physics should be open, there should be a variety of approaches. These are the truisms I think, but important truisms. It should be critical. The approaches should engage with each others advantages and disadvantages. And it should be responsive. All sides should be heard. Really heard. Now why should physics be open, critical and responsive? May be a truism but were in the game of asking for explanations. So why should it be open, critical and responsive? The primary arguments among philosophers are modelled on JS Mills Our Liberty. We need to allow as much liberty as possible for people in designing their lives because we dont know what is the best way to live. And thats in part because we dont know what are all the good alternatives to choose from. And the only way to get a full set of options is to encourage experiments in living. To encourage people to go out and do the hard detailed labour it takes to figure out a genuine option for how to live. So too with
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physics. We dont know what the alternatives are, and any option to be a genuine option in physics, must be detailed. Must be worked out. And that wont happen unless physicists are encouraged to work on alternatives. This argument of course rests on the assumption that we dont know what option is best. Now according to Smolin, string theorists often descent, they know string theory is best. Indeed more than one of them (this is know is true) more than once have prophesised that the end of physics is in view with string theory. Now we dont need anymore experiments in living. We know how to live. All we have to do is polish off a few details. Now in ordinary life, we have a name for this kind of attitude hubris - and most of us dislike it. Indeed, distrust it. Philosophers of science have a complicated name for a very simple argument as to why it is a bad idea in physics. The argument is called The pessimistic meta-induction. And its this. Our all best, most successful, most lovely basic theories in the past have been shown to be wrong. Any good method of reasoning from past to future tells us that our current best, most successful, most lovely basic theory will be wrong as well. Now I mentioned Mills On Liberty, as a central source for the structure of an argument in favour of an open physics critical and responsive. Political theory provides a model for yet another kind of argument for the same conclusion. Mills pointed out that we dont know what the alternatives for a good or just life are. The second argument points out that even if we had all the alternative somehow on the table in front of us, we have no good grounded criteria for choice among them. Philosophers like Stuart Hampshire and Bernard Williams, philosophers who are sometimes labelled The Oxford pessimists argue that there is no well argued and well evidenced theory of what constitutes justice or the good life that can and should
command responsible universal consent. There is no universally acceptable substantive theory, of justice or morality. Now my title, Physics is conflict is an echo of Hampshires title, Justice is conflict in which he argues these points. And what Hampshire concludes is that at best, so we have no substantive universally acceptable substantive of theory of justice and morality. At best, what can be hoped for in its stead, are reasonable procedures for managing conflict. Which may include procedures for how to choose, when choice is necessary, which is often not the case. And how to live together when it is not. Philosophers of science have paralleled the Oxford pessimists for the most part, unwittingly. So we have these two bits of philosophy marching along, making very much structurally similar arguments without recognising it. But philosophers of science have paralleled the use of the Oxford pessimists in a moral and political theory in arguing that there is no substant of theory of what constitutes the best theory that can and should command universal responsible assent. At best what we can hope for are reasonable procedures for managing disagreement, procedures that tell us how to choose, when choice is necessary as for instance, in constructing lasers for eye surgery where we do well to choose quantum mechanics and not rely just on Newtons and Maxwells theories. So we want procedures that tell us how to choose when choice is necessary. But equally importantly, how to live together when you dont actually have to force a choice. And that includes procedures for how to nurture productive dissent and how to allocate scarce resources among competing points of view. Consider the disagreement between Smolin and the string theorists about the substantive theory, of theory choice. Or at least as Smolin pictures it. Smolin demands that acceptable theories produce new physical insights, not mathematical, but physical insights and new successful empirical predictions old (inaudible) demands. Many string theorists on his view, want to jettison these demands at this
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point in physics denying that they are decisive universal criteria for theory choice. Mathematical insight matters, so they say, as does consistency. Matters a lot. And so does consistency consistency with other theories and with certain intricate mathematical structures already in place. Now philosophers of science call features like these (and theres a long list we usually come up) empirical adequacy, surprising successful prediction, physical insight, consistency, simplicity, mathematical insight, etc etc. We call these features epistemic virtues. The virtue part is suggestive. Like virtues of character, we cannot be assured that they will all come together in one package. So that youll have all the good virtues with one theory and none with the other. And where they dont we have no assurance that there is a universally correct ranking among them. One virtue more important than the other in all cases. Nor a universally correct procedure for weighing up various bundles. Further, even had we a rule for how to weigh the virtues against one another, these virtues are all far too vague to be of serious help. If you really want to decide whether to go to graduate school and pursue a certain kind of string theory or study with Lee, the looking to see, you know, holding up this list of empirical virtues and then saying, well lets see which of these two theories does better. Thats going to be absolutely useless to you because the terms in the list are so abstract and so vague. So you could try to improve by introducing context specific virtues as Smolin himself does when he At the beginning of his book, hes got five problems that he thinks any good fundamental theory now should be solving, so thats a context specific set of criteria for theory choice for how well youre doing on these very much more concrete things. Those include as we heard, they have virtues such as the unification of forces in particles, explaining dark matter and cleaning up the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Now these two though are too vague to bite as witnessed by the different assessments. By Smolin versus string theorists on the achievements and promise of string theory itself, on five problems. So the lesson from that is that epistemic virtues dont help us, dont provide for us a substantive theory of theory choice. Well now, so far in talking about epistemic virtues I focused on the virtue-like nature of epistemic virtues. But the epistemic is equally important to pessimism about substant of theories, of theory choice. Epistemic virtues should be knowledge conducive. And knowledge must be true or at least true as we can get. So how can we defend that these virtues are truth conducive. Smolin defends the one he stresses in a production of physical insight and of new successful predictions. He defends those choices by an appeal to the history of science. Good theories have always done this before. Pessimistic philosophers will cite in response, the simple argument with a complicated name the pessimistic meta-induction. We now take most of our great theories of the past to be fundamentally mistaken. But we touted them as great, just because they did so well in all the usual epistemic virtues. So epistemic virtue has shown itself not to be a good guide to truth. We are then without a reliable, well grounded substantive theory, of theory choice. We have no account of what virtues a theory should have to justify accepting it. In parallel with a case of justice and morality, procedure then is the best we have left. Procedures that can nurture new theories and can manage conflict. If procedure is all we have left, then Smolins worry about the hegemony of string theory are all the more worrying if theyre true. Physics must be open, critical and responsive if its theories are to have any claim to rational acceptability. As in my title, physics, good physics is conflict. Now before closing, I would like to return briefly to epistemic virtues and to one
in particular thats essential to Smolin and also to unification. Its so essential that Smolin doesnt even defend it. In his book, the unification is the name of the game. But why? It is in no better state than any of the other so-called epistemic virtues when it comes to claims to truth conduciveness. Pessimistic meta-induction yet again, we have zillions of failed attempts at unifications. Not the ones that Lees interested in but when I studied physics, worked on a lot more practical things like quantum optics to see how lasers worked. There were thousands of failed attempts at unifications. And hosts of previously successful unifications we have now discarded. So pessimistic meta-induction shows that in the past unification hasnt been truth conducive no reason to think it is particularly in the future. And a handful of unifications that we still accept do not much counter the weight for making the inductive argument. Of course if you like unity I myself dont. My aesthetic ideal is that of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Glory be to God for dappled things. If you like unity, unification would be nice to have, if its there to be had. Well if theres a pot of gold in my garden, given my expensive tastes, it would be a good idea for me to start a digging campaign. But I am without very strong evidence that the gold is there. I have just a wish and a prayer as well as an ungrounded belief that the world is nice, in just the way I think of nice being. And thats based on a few pieces of good luck that have gone my way. So in light of that, probably I had better not give up my day job at LSE to put more effort into digging. But this is just what the theoretical physics seems to me to be doing in this hunt for a unified fundamental theory. Now I am a great beneficiary of many advances in physics like laser surgery and magnetic resonance. Advances that are made at the sharp end where physics is really messy, far from the nice mathematical 10 or 11 dimensional spaces, where the unification projects live. And as a beneficiary of this
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physics at the sharp end, I'm not happy entirely about the costs of digging for the grail of unity. As my daughters urge me, I would like to urge physics, please dont give up your day job. Professor Chris Isham: Well thank you Nancy. I must say so far, the timing of the speakers is absolutely immaculate. Nice to be a chairperson when this sort of thing happens. Now at this stage were supposed to be going to questions from the floor, but I thought that first perhaps, in light of some of the comments that Mike made, it would be reasonable to ask the utterly unreasonable Lee Smolin to respond briefly to the refreshingly reasonable Mike Duff. Professor Lee Smolin: Thank you, and thank you Michael and Nancy. I am the reasonable Lee Smolin and my book is a product of that person. The unreasonable Lee Smolin is a construction rather like Wikipedia by many people, journalists, some unfortunate publicists, but not in the UK thank God. And I think also perhaps some people who would prefer to reduce the argument of this book because this book is structured on argument to caricature so it could be easily dismissed. And its strange to have a book misread but let me give an example. As Ive already mentioned this to Michael. What about me? I think of myself as a would-be seer who fortunately was good enough at my craft to contribute occasionally to problem solving. Thats very different than what Michael quoted, page 311. And the cover copy that Michael quoted at the beginning was inconsistent with the judgement of the book and was removed in the UK edition. And therefore you will not find it in the UK edition. I was not completely happy with either the journalism or the writings of publicists. But when one writes a serious book, and this is a serious book its not a popularisation. Its an engagement in a crisis, one expects to be read seriously and responded to seriously. I think for example, I dont want to take very much time, but if one reads for example,
my summary, to summarise on the basis of page 191, Of current results we cannot confidently assert the string theory solves the problem of quantum gravity. The evidence is mixed. To a certain approximation, it does seem to consistently unify quantum theory and gravity and give sensible and finite answers. But it is hard to decide if this is true of the whole theory. What we can say, skipping after some more of such, is that within these limitations, there is some good evidence that string theory points to the existence of a consistent unification of gravity and quantum theory. But is string theory itself that consistent, unification? In the absence of a solution to problems which were mentioned in the paragraph I skipped, it seems unlikely. It seems to me this is balanced, measured and a result of the careful argument which weighs the positives and the negatives and the pros and the cons, and thats the book that I wrote and thats the book that has not always been reviewed, but that I think serious people should read and respond to. And as I said, part of the intention of the book is to examine the role that disagreement and argument play in the processes of science. So I welcome strongly argument and disagreement, but to the actual case made in the book. And I would like also to respond to Professor Cartwrights remarks about unification which I would hope to try to explain why in spite of the good things she said, I remain committed to the search for unification. But that unfortunately, I dont have time for, but I take those comments seriously. The landscape problem, theres some things that Mike Duff and I agree about. The landscape problem is a serious problem and it was the subject of my first book going back now to 1997. Were not here to debate that but I'm glad people have caught up with the view that the landscape problem is a serious problem.
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What you hear behind these, whats really going on? Whats really going on I think on reflection, which is discussed in this book, but I think even more so seeing the response and the discussions being carried out is, that there really are different styles of approaching difficult scientific questions. And Mike Duff objects to my distinction between seers and craftspeople (inaudible) here between hill climbers and valley crossers. But its not disrespectful. And as I said, I see myself as a hill climber and a craftsperson. But I know who the seers are who are living now and I pay attention to them. But I certainly dont claim to be one. I certainly dont disrespect the craft that most of us work on. But nonetheless, there are different traditions. And I think whats going on is that there is a tradition of search for answers to foundational questions which was dominant in the early part of the century of which Einstein and (inaudible) and (inaudible). and Heisenberg and others were exponents of, which was closely informed by the philosophical tradition. These people knew where they stood in that tradition of European philosophy and saw what they were doing with respect to it. And there is then a more pragmatic tradition which took over when that tradition failed, because that tradition did fail in the 1930s because they got bogged down in so far, unresolved disputes about the meaning of quantum mechanics when there was real science to be done by pushing quantum physics forward and a more pragmatic tradition took over, epitomised by people like (inaudible) and so forth. And pushed science forward and the standard model of particle physics in all of the great progress in cosmology is the result of their work. And if I could put my view in one sentence, both traditions are essential for the progress of science. But the apparent difficulty of resolving the key foundational questions which Einstein left us over, now a full century after their initiation or their discovery, tells me that we need more of the kind of foundational philosophical reflective thinking and searching that that earlier tradition represented. Professor Chris Isham: Thank you very much Lee. Okay so well throw the
discussion open to everybody. It doesnt stop the speakers having a go at each other if they want, but you can join in now. Professor Michael Duff: May I just quickly respond? Professor quickly. Chris Isham: Yes
Professor Michael Duff: Your book Lee, has so many different versions and editions, its a bit like the (inaudible) universal interpretation of quantum mechanics. Because each time I criticise something you wrote, youll tell me theres some version or some edition where you didnt write it! For example, I think of myself the words, I think of myself as a seer are here on page 287 of the version that Professor Lee Smolin: On the proofs on which if they did their job here, there came a warning not to quote without checking the final copy. These were the original American proofs and that was a mistake of the copy editor that was corrected and is not in the reading The phrase as I read it, is the phrases I wrote it, and as appeared in all the published editions. And every time I review a book, I take heed of the warning to check the final copy with the publisher before I quote directly. Professor Michael Duff: The other point I would just ... one final point I would make is that the fact that some of the insults have been taken out of the British edition may be cold comfort to the international community. Professor Chris Isham: You see what fun it is that we have theoretical physicists. Okay, lets have some questions from the floor. Unidentified speaker: Thank you. I'm very struck by the facts that the starting point for both Michael and Lee in their overall view of what constitutes good practice in physics is a Popperian view of the progress of science, of trying to falsify a theory against experiment. Lees underlying argument is essentially you could say, string
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theory has failed to make test experimental predictions at this stage. And Michaels argument seems to be that its very young, its early days, it took years if you look at Like you gave the example of EPR and then the Alan (inaudible) experiments only taking place 40 years after, 50 years after that. My question therefore is for Nancy, this Popperian view of how physics should be done from the perspective of a philosopher of science is 50/60 years out of date. And I would just like Nancy to comment upon that and how that impacts upon this debate. Professor Nancy Cartwright: Thank you. Well, I think it impacts very much in the way I was trying to describe, falsifiability is in the traditional list of epistemic virtues, different people put different things in and take them out. And I really do want to (a) currently well-argued view is that none of the epistemic virtues are epistemic or can be defended as epistemic. And its not so much that Popperianism is 50 years out of date and then there was Lakatosianism, then there was (inaudible) and then there was Bayesianism and so forth its that we have this serious problem of not being able to come up with a grounded theory of theory choice. And Popperianism is just one in a sense, failure a careful, thoughtful failure. Unidentified speaker: My question is to Lee really. Its about a point he raised regarding young students or young PhD researchers, who might be embarking on their studies into physics. And one of the points he mentioned is that lots of young students are possibly seduced by the glamour attached to string theory and are being shifted or directed towards string theory as he put it. Sorry to paraphrase you but thats the general impression I get. Now at another level you also claim that most physicists are craftspeople or hill climbers as you put it. And there is a very small number of seers or valley divers or whatever you call them. And so my question is really, does it really matter if a large number of students are perhaps going towards string theory which you view like a bad thing, if a few
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seers in your view, happen to go down the right route and then 20 years down the line, attract in a large number of craftspeople towards a view that may be right? This is according to your view. Whereas from string theory point of view, it hardly matters if a lot of people go towards I mean, how is it a bad thing if a large number of young physicists go towards a particular theory if 20 or 30 years down the line, the right theory will win in the end. Professor Lee Smolin: Its not a bad thing and people should, including students, should work on those things they think are more promising. The most important thing we do as scientists is invest our time towards directions where we think are most promising and where we can have an effect. The only thing I believe is that the evaluation of young people should be done on the basis of their individual merit. And I include in that their intellectual independence, their leadership, their ability to invent and follow their own research programmes without regard to whether they follow a research programme which is large, pre existing or not, and I think that its not difficult. Its a question I agree with Nancy about the difficulty of theory choice but nonetheless, these are issues that are easily recognised and dealt with and implemented. Unidentified speaker: I dont want to add injury to insult, but I think that what the trouble with this is that its (inaudible) This is seriously misrepresented basically (inaudible). There is this official view that basic aim is to improve and basic method is to assess contributions to knowledge (inaudible). And this is the problem with string theories (inaudible) that method of assessment and the other (inaudible). This view is really nonsensical. (inaudible) the theories (inaudible) are always unified theories, are more (inaudible) one could always concoct endlessly many horribly dis-unified theories (inaudible) which never (inaudible) precisely what they like (inaudible) of being unified. And what that means to me is that there is
this big interest by some (inaudible) but the universe is more or less unified. But its such (inaudible). Its true but considered. If one was more honest about the basic aims of this (inaudible) acknowledges a highly problematic metaphysical and (inaudible) sort of basis from the developer basis, for objectively assessing ideas (inaudible) before they reached the possibility of them being pessimist (inaudible) . Professor Chris Isham: So youre saying the trouble with physics is done by physicists really, is it? Unidentified speaker: Its swallowed a (inaudible) is taken for granted. If time physicists adopted somewhat more Einstein (inaudible). I mean one of the things that Einstein (inaudible) about the universe is that (inaudible). I think that was actually quite basic. He even said (inaudible) he couldnt really believe in (inaudible) . Professor Chris Isham: Thank you. Nancy, do you want to say something? Professor Nancy Cartwright: I always welcome comments that point out that unity is really a very important aim in physics and it is more What actually happens is more directed towards unification than towards getting it right for just the reasons that were just stated. And I find that problematic, and the questioner has the opposite But it seems to me that its an important point about the structure of how physics is done. Professor Michael Duff: Well I just say thank God Maxwell didnt question the need to unify electricity. Thank God Maxwell from the other century didnt question the need to unify electricity and magnetism when he did. Thank goodness that Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow didnt stop to question whether they should unify the weakened electromagnetic interactions. So I'm going to stick with the winning team. Unidentified speaker: Theres a question implicit in the first clause of the title, The trouble with physics and I would like very briefly to put a spanner in the works and
suggest to you what the trouble with physics is. When people first started to knock this out of atoms, I think about 1870 for about the next three decades, the assumption was that space and time are the same in an atom as outside an atom. Also that everything inside an atom was like everything outside an atom but smaller. That is space is space, time is time, particles are particles and waves are waves. By the 1920s and 30s it had become very obvious that space and time were very different inside atoms and outside atoms, but those facts have never been incorporated into quantum theory. And I think if they were, all the problems would disappear and relativity and quantum theory would unite into one theory. I could tell you a lot more about space and time Professor Chris Isham: Another time! Unidentified speaker: But I'm not prepared to monopolise Professor Smolins time because he is trying to sell a book. But I would be pleased to talk Professor Lee Smolin: Not particularly. I'm trying to This is serious. I'm trying to have a discussion in the context of the tradition if you like, of natural philosophy of serious writing about issues and problems that science faces. And time and time again, when science has been at a turning point, scientists have written in a way that the public could read, if you like, look over our shoulders as we argue with each other. But I'm engaged (and this is not publicity, this is not popularisation) and we all in our field are engaged in a discussion and argument because we dont know, were puzzled, were deeply puzzled by the turn that our science has taken. And this book is one of half a dozen books to come out in the last several years which engage this issue. Others for example, are by Lisa Randall, Lenny Susskind, Lawrence (inaudible). Peter Woit. There are still others coming by other people Alex Lincoln. There is a beautiful opportunity for the public to look over our shoulders as we debate the most puzzling
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issues in our science. And thats what this is. Its a moving and ongoing debate. Unidentified speaker: Question mainly directed at Michaels comments about the length of time that various developments have taken to emerge. And I think you mentioned entanglement taking a long time. When I was doing my PhD in particle physics, I vaguely remember theres probably one or perhaps two people working one entanglement which might explain why it took rather a long time for much progress to be made. My mate Mike Green used to tell me about this strange thing he was working on called string theory and I used to think, well hes a bit mad working on that but theres just him doing it and a couple of his mates. I'm now professor of the business school and I have to look at investment proposals. I gather that theres rather a lot of people working on string theory today. And I was intrigued by the comments that Michael made that, Well, maybe we wont make progress this year or this decade or beyond. And I just wondered if you were pitching to a politician, how many people and how many years would you suggest the Government funds this research before they pull the plug on it? Professor Michael Duff: Well the short answer would be, for as long as smart physicists are working on it. But you raised a very good point. There are many more people working on string theory than there were on these other subjects that you mentioned. But so is the difficulty of the problem that theyre setting themselves. Theyre not trying to explain just one tiny corner of physics. They have a much more ambitious goal of an allembracing theory that will explain all physical phenomena. And thats not going to happen overnight. Theories of everything dont fall off trees. So you were right, that there are many more people working on it but I would say that the challenge is also commensurable with it. Professor Lee Smolin: I have found talking with people in investment, especially high tech investment, very very instructive. One venture capitalist I spoke with, I asked him how do you judge the degree of risk to
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take on. And he said, If more than 10% of the companies we fund are still in business after five years, were not taking enough risk and wont be making as much money as we could be if we took on more risk. And I'm perfectly happy to say that a number of the research programmes that Ive contributed to, the way that I envisioned they would work out are by now dead. And the young people who carry them on are doing something which has different names and is envisioned differently than what my friends and I envisioned 20, 25 years ago. And what I'm doing now is different. And I dont mind them calling those earlier things failures, probably even over exaggerating, because I think I wish that when we report to the Funding Councils, there was a place in the application for a new funding, for renewed funding to say, explain how your previous ideas failed and what your new departures are. Another thing this venture capitalist told me is that they dont mind if they find somebody in their company fails. If its the right person or the right mix of people, theyll fund them again for a different idea. But granting that they came back honestly and said, Our idea failed whether its biotech or software or something like that, if they honestly can be trusted to self evaluate in a high risk situation, then they can be trusted again, after failure. And I wish that we had not perhaps all of science, but those of us who do this high risk payoff stuff that we had the kind of interaction with our funders that people in high tech business have with the venture capitalists. Professor Nancy Cartwright: Id like to see physics doing a bit more theory of everything. Not a single theory of everything but spreading the resources to do theories of all the things that physics can profitably address. And so I do worry about the resource allocation problem. Professor Chris Isham: Ive been thinking, would you like to endow a chair and (inaudible) a few more comments! See me afterwards!
Unidentified speaker: Going back to the analogy of the hills, the landscape with the various heights of hills in it. I wonder if you could correct me. I think I may have it wrong, but I thought I understood that when you were talking about evolution in biology, that nothing went downhill in evolution, that you were extinct if you tried to go downhill. But evolution only went uphill. And I wonder if thats related at all (inaudible). Its a waste of time trying to change scientists mind. You just have to wait for the old guards to die out. So thats how you get scientific revolution, you wait for the old guard to die out rather than expect them to go downhill and up the other side. Professor Lee Smolin: I'm not an expert in theoretical biology but I have studied it and I have had an excursion where I tried to work in it. And one of the great problems in theoretical biology is, if you have a situation where youre trying to optimise some quantity and it has many hills, what you would call many (inaudible) but only one optimum. How do you find the optimum and how do you not get trapped in the small hills? And to do that you have to go down and theres a large literature by people like Stuart Kauffman but hes only one of a whole community of people, exactly trying to understand how a natural selection One can go down a little bit before going up again and I'm not an expert on it and I dont know if all of it is finished science, but you can find lively discussions of speciations and so forth, exactly in the terms of going down before you go up. Professor Chris Isham: Okay thank you. Another question at the back. Oh! My PhD student whos not a string theorist! Unidentified speaker: Hello. I would like to address Michael Duff. In my opinion he failed to address the most important point of Lees book which is that regardless of the quality of their ideas, if a young scientist decides not to study string theory, they damage their career, plain and simple. Id like to know what you think about that and how you think, if thats a good thing, whether you think that could be changed.
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Professor Michael Duff: I think it isnt true. In fact most I think the simple fact is that it isnt true. With the switching on of the large Hadron collider in Geneva, most of the jobs in the last year or so, or going back a couple of years, are going actually to particle physics phenomenologists. Perhaps rightly so given that the machine to that can be switched on. Theyre not going to string theorists particularly. Professor Lee Smolin: If I may, because here we agree. What I precisely said was nothing like that and wrote. What I precisely wrote was comparing people who work on different approaches to the problem of quantum gravity. And in that context, the statement that might criticise me for of the only three positions, it was only three junior faculty positions going to people working on approaches to quantum gravity which are not string theory in the United States since 1991. And thats a correct fact. One has to be careful of exaggeration. Its clear and I would ask you really to try to quote me correctly. Michael is absolutely right and the journalist that he quoted, I havent read that piece, but if you quoted the journalist correctly, which I assume he did, that journalist has gotten a wildly exaggerated claim from something that I formulated very precisely and very carefully. And its very frustrating to try to write something which is carefully worded and to have it over and over again being misquoted by journalists I should say the majority of journalists and reviewers have not misquoted the book, but a number have and its very frustrating when one is on very contested ground where my colleagues and I, we have as you see, very strong views and feelings. Unidentified speaker: (inaudible) I should perhaps declare my bias because I am also a string theorist (inaudible). But the point I would like to make is this. If you wish to stimulate this kind of scientific debate, you say that it is frustrating that the journalists take it on board and they misquote you and so forth. But there are structures in place in which you can have this debate. Okay, we have our (inaudible). We have peer-reviewed
journals. Three weeks ago I was in Athens and I was speaking to somebody who knows no English whatsoever, no theoretical physics whatsoever, but she knows the (inaudible) string theorist. And she said to me, is there not this man, his name is Smolin. Hes just written a book thats disproved your theory. Okay, sure you were misrepresented but if you choose to write a book such as this, you bear the responsibility for the consequences of it. Professor Lee Smolin: So if I may, because I think that is directed at me. Every substantial part, every part of the critique of string theory as well as all the other science here, was presented in detail (inaudible) first on the archive. And I'm happy to give you the archive numbers later but theyre all referenced there. And some people did respond. Where I work at Perimeter Institute where there are very good people across the board in these different approaches, including string theory. We have lively friendly discussions. I think that the discussion has been going on inside the community. If I may however, I dont think that enough of it goes on. So for example, when we have conferences in non-string quantum gravity, which we do more or less annually, we make sure of two things. We make sure the different active approaches are all represented, including string theory. We always invite two string theorists, at least, for a week programme. And we make sure that theres always a critic, somebody who comes and whose role is to stand up and tell us what were all doing wrong. These things are not the practice in the major string theory conferences. Unidentified speaker: I agree. Professor Lee Smolin: Okay. And as somebody who has worked both in string theory and not in string theory, it has been extremely frustrating to be You know, because Ive written some papers on something which is not string theory, when I go to (it doesnt always happen) as Ive done a number of times, to the annual String Theory conferences, people will approach me and say,
Why are you here? And I could multiply that endlessly, but I think that So first of all, I agree with your first point. And I was scrupulous that every issue, scientific issue in the book was several years to a full year before the finishing of the book, in the scientific literature so that I could take into account the responses. In fact quite deliberately, if you look at a few papers, they were designed to do that. And as far as the question of responsibility is concerned, theres a long discussion of our relationship to our friends, in journalism and so forth. My sense, and I want to make myself clear, most of the people who practice scientific journalism do it very well and are very scrupulous and are very aware of whats going on. The reviews which have misquoted the book, which have been a minority of them, have not been people whose speciality was scientific journalism. I have nothing but the highest respect. Most people in scientific journalism do a very difficult job, carefully and scrupulously and well. One can speculate about why, you know, these books have gotten (because this is one of a number of books) attention and thats an interesting conversation. But with respect, its not the conversation that I would prefer to have. The conversation that I would prefer to have is about the science and both, where to go as scientists, what to do, what do we believe, why, formulate arguments, argue with each other thats the discussion that I prefer to have and thats the substantial part of the discussion of the book. The secondary, the framework that thats put in is a discussion about the nature of science and how science works. And thats also an intellectual discussion which is nothing to do with publicity. Its an attempt, very humble attempt to make a contribution to the work of people like Nancy Cartwright, that is, why it is that science works and how. Professor Chris Isham: Weve almost run out of time but somebody was waving at me somewhere there, yeah. Just one quick question please.
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John Taylor: I think theres a question here that Id like to ask both Lee and Mike as to the nature of (inaudible) virtue (inaudible). From what Ive heard, and what I did when I worked in (inaudible) very many years ago, I got the impression that string theory had a richness to it that came from the traditional (inaudible) Einstein, through (inaudible) and so on. It was a richness that doesnt maybe, at least in my view, (inaudible) in what Lee was talking about, the (inaudible). And I'm wondering if (inaudible) as to what they see and the true reasons that theyve got young people flowing into (inaudible). Professor Chris Isham: Thank you John. Lee. Professor Lee Smolin: Thank you. Well, first of all, as Chris just said to me sort of (inaudible) unless you were going to say it Anyway, those of us who work on mostly things other than string theory foundational approaches to quantum mechanics and quantum gravity, get plenty of student interest as well. So we dont want to give the impression that somehow the student interest is going only one way. We turn away most of the student interest as I'm sure our friends in string theory do. The richness of string theory, the idea of string theory, the basic idea of unification through extended objects do, if I can speak a technical word once, (inaudible) theories has tremendous motivation and I think is true. My judgment is probably true. Thats the core idea. For me, the disjunction between the approaches that I'm willing to bet my time on and those that I'm not, has to do with the issue of background independence that I mentioned. As a consequence of that, the attempt to work out that idea of duality, of gauge theories and string theories in a background, in dependent context, leads us to the necessity of nine or ten spatial dimensions and super symmetry. Now that is either correct about nature or incorrect. Thats the big bet. And it leads to tremendous richness because there are so many possibilities for treating the geometry and the topology of the extra dimensions. And
that is either a deep insight into nature or its a wrong turn. And indeed that issue of what to do about unification through higher dimensions, and the geometry and the stability of the extra dimensions, has been in play since 1920/22/23 and I dont have time to quote it, to find it. But I found some very interesting letters by Einstein discussing these issues already in the early 1920s. If you develop that same idea which I think is the deep idea behind string theory, in the background, in dependent context, without the picture of strings moving in a classical geometry, but taking the whole geometry, quantum mechanically as the degrees of freedom that arise out of the dynamics of these extended objects and to the people excuse me for the slightly technical word, you get loop quantum gravity in (inaudible) models, precisely on the nose. Thats what they are. So one possibility is that these are different And this is what I advocated in my second book, that string theory in loop quantum gravity are merely different manifestations, different ways with different mathematical techniques to explore a fundamental and possibly deep and fundamental idea which is the role of one dimensional objects, strings in the unification of physics. Professor Chris Isham: Mike? Professor Michael Duff: As Chris mentioned at the beginning in the early 70s, I was one of Chris and I were contemporaries then, believe it or not. The great question then was how do you unify gravity and quantum mechanics. They seem to be completely irreconcilable. And string theory came along and in our opinion and in the opinion of string theorists, has solved that problem. And that cannot be underestimated, that its incorporated the best of quantum theory and of Einsteins general relativity into one unified whole. And in contrast to most of the alternative theories, it not only does that but it provides a way, we think, of explaining the structure of the elementary particles. And its this
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cohesion that I think impresses the young minds and persuades them that their future lies in string theory. Professor Chris Isham: Well thank you. I'm afraid we have to stop at this point. One thing you may be thinking is how incredibly lucky we are to be theoretical physicists enormous privilege actually. Were allowed to earn a modest income doing this for our careers. Anyway, I hope youve all enjoyed this evenings discussion. Its certainly been lively. And Id like to thank all three of our speakers, very much indeed for their contribution. Matthew Taylor: Theres such a sort of intellectual energy in the room and I'm going to invite you all to go for a drink in a second, so I thought how can I sort of lower the tone. I thought a pathetic joke would come in handy, so I was thinking of asking the question, can you tell me what a string is. Because of course the answer to that would be, a frayed knot. Sorry! Tonights event forms part of the worlds largest free nature programme. This programme is made possible by the support of our network of RSA Fellows. So those of you who are here in London who are not yet Fellows, you can make a donation as you go out or possibly more importantly, you could think about joining the RSA Fellowship. You can pick up a pack. You can email us. Or you can speak to any member of staff here this evening. But then finally, once again on your behalf, Id like to offer my formal thanks to the panel. Its been an absolutely fantastic discussion, and to ask you to join me in thanking them and our Chair this evening, Professor Chris Isham.
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The Trouble With Physics Smolin Discusion

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The Trouble With Physics Smolin Discusion

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The Trouble with Physics - The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science and What Comes Next

Manifesto Challenge: Developing a Capable Population

Professor Lee Smolin

Professor Michael Duff

Professor Nancy Cartwright

Professor Chris Isham

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