Beauties and Beasts

Jim Holt (a name some of my old friends will likely recognize) has a rather well written article in The New Yorker about the conflict in string theory. I am no string theorist - though I can certainly toss the occasional "nonperturbative tests of Ads/CFT correspondence" into my work when neccessary (don't judge, you all do it) - and Peter Woit has already blogged more directly about it at Not Even Wrong, but I would like to mention a bit that struck me about the article.

Warning: the article quotes Woit and Smolin more than Susskind, so he might be biased for it (since the reader does not yet know my style of prose, I should say that this comment is made with tongue firmly in cheek; I believe that everyone is biased... Except me).

It seems that the debate about whether "beauty" is an apporpriate characteristic by which to judge a physical theory is misplaced. The author recalls the usual argument:

Perhaps, some have conjectured, a kind of cultural Darwinism has drilled it into us to take aesthetic pleasure in theories that are more likely to be true. Or perhaps physicists are somehow inclined to choose problems that have beautiful solutions rather than messy ones. Or perhaps nature itself, at its most fundamental level, possesses an abstract beauty that a true theory is bound to mirror.

It seems to me that the evolution of the physicists notion of beauty is not quite Darwinic (is that a word?). I do not see the small and seemingly randomn changes in aesthetic tempermant that would march science forward. Perhaps in previous centuries, when collaborations were smaller and communicatiions less rapid, it was possible for a physicist to pass a specific aesthetic sensibility to a student, who would modify that by their own perspectives and ideas into something a bit different and - perhaps - a bit better.

Now-a-days though, it would seem that aesthetics is governed more by group think. Blogs and books and articles in the New Yorker can diseminate opinions and arguments (mostly of an elite and stubborn few, though you may argue this point) with astonishing efficiency. Peoples opinions and prejudices are reinforced by daily sessions of public rumination and/or bickering on blog threads, chalkboards and snippets of quotes from the experts - arrayed by journalists in articles in the New Yorker to maximize the appearence of seething animosity between well entrenched camps of dogmatists.

So where are we? Society has proven time and time again that group think stunts the evolution of ideas in some rather dramatic ways (I'm thinking here war time Germany and present day (wartime?) america), and that the usual recourse of such a program is that the masses fall in line behind those in power. This has been almost wholly true of the
current situation in HET, though certainly the less dogmatic philosophy recently adopted in the creation of the Perimeter Institute (and others?) is noble. My fear is that the dogmatists will start seething with some real animosity (the current argument, sans Luboš Motl, seems to actually be fairly tame).

Can't we agree that physics is simply not in an apropriate position to postulate la théorie de tout, and all go about doing our very interesting and sometimes fulfilling work?

Is the funding for string theory really dependent on its being the end-all-be-all?

I doubt it, string theory has provided (and motivated) some remarkably interesting results accross many disciplines.

Is its current status as pop-phys publisher's favorite topic dependent?

Maybe a bit, but I would venture that much of the general public is actually quite ready to read the books of those like Greene and Randall for what they really are - well written depictions of potential realities (exciting realities if you're an undergrad philosophy student) from the imaginations of some of the worlds top physicists 1.

Are the string physicists afraid that without the mistique of the ultimate knowledge to draw in all the best grad students, that they'll be left having to compete for good students like everyone else?

I doubt they're that conniving (and I think that the mistique of being the supposedly most high brow caste of the discipline is enough to wooh most of them either way).

So screw it! Let yr hair down a bit! Take the high road! If you cannot agree on the applicability of the scientists dictum on testability, than at least agree on the scientists dictum on the expression of possibles: weight all discussions of final theories with the apropriate modifiers of uncertainty, and all the critques of other peoples babies with the appropriate modifiers of gentility.

Oh, and just to prove I'm not stuffy: all yr theories are "failures" and yr babies look like horses! Just kidding! Gawd, don't take yrself so seriously!

I'm not done with this topic, but I've spent enough time at this today. Join me next time when I discuss "Pretty girls aren't stringy, or so says Guido Dolci (who apparently agrees with this blogger that its time for physics and fashion to collide!)"

Be sure to tune in!


1.) Not that I am at all implying that either of these authors uses a heavy
hand in implying the absolute reality of string theory, but I can say
from the experience of speaking with readers from the general public,
that they certainly walk away (from Brian's book at least) strongly
inclined to believe in those tiny little cellists)