He also denies the difference between renormalizable field theories and the rest, and so forth. Two decades ago or so, Lee was also disappointed by his peers who were excited by calculations in supergravity. Needless to say, Smolin would be disappointed by Einstein and Bohr, too, because they couldn't stand scientifically unjustifiable philosophical speculations either.
The reason why they were nothing like his heroes was that they preferred calculations over philosophical speculations. For example, we learn that when Lee Smolin studied at Harvard, he was disappointed by Coleman, Glashow, and Weinberg who were "nothing like his heroes". He also blames the "failures" on the culture of particle physics that has already existed before string theory. This meme is repeated at many places and it is later used as a criterion to hire physicists. More generally, Lee proposes a truly radical thesis that it is wrong for mathematics to play a crucial role in theoretical physics.
I am afraid that it is fair to say that Lee is trying to sell things that could never be bought by the experts because he knows that his lay readers won't be able to tell the difference between a result and a nonsense. Neither of these things is supported by any results in the scientific literature, not even Lee's own results, and most of them contradict what we know. There are also frequently repeated speculations that string theory and M-theory don't exist and many other similar "ideas", together with the most popular myth that string theory can't be experimentally tested. Instead, he applies the methods of creationists and invents a "strong" and "weak" version of Maldacena's equivalence. In doing so, he ignores thousands of papers that lead to the opposite conclusion. He also proposes that the AdS/CFT correspondence and various other dualities are wrong. Because these statements are of mathematical nature, we are sure that Lee is wrong even in the absence of any experiments.įor example, he dedicates dozens of pages to speculations about the divergent amplitudes at finite orders of the perturbation theory - amplitudes that have been proven to be finite. In the context of string theory, he literally floods the pages of his book with undefendable speculations about some basic results of string theory. He also believes that the attempts to falsify the theory of relativity are among the most important topics to work on. He believes that quantum mechanics must be wrong at some fundamental level and many people should try to prove it. What are the problems with Lee's appraisal of physics? First of all, Lee reveals his intense hostility against all of modern physics, not just string theory.
#Lee smolen not even wrong how to
The second part of the book offers a postmodern view on the scientific community and some radical proposals how to fix the "problems" that the author has identified.Īs far as I can say, everything that tries to go beyond the existing popular books is unreasonable with one possible exception, namely some of Lee's general ideas about the anthropic principle. The first part of the book tries to focus on technical aspects of string theory. The book is primarily filled with the suicidal and absurd sentiment that all of modern physics of the last 30 years - the era of Lee's career - is a failure.
It was tough because the concentration of irrational statements and anti-scientific sentiments has exceeded my expectations. Believe me, we like him but it is not always easy to take him seriously.Ī few months ago, I had to promise Lee that I would read the whole book before saying anything about it. The newest theory says that the neutrinos are octopi swimming in the spin network. Then he returns to a conference or a journalist and repeats that all of his theories have been perfectly proven, while offering even more unusual theories. Lee says that he understands these arguments. We smile at each other and Lee is being politely explained why his newest theories can't really work. The interactions between Lee Smolin and mainstream physicists are interesting. See also a review written by someone else Lee Smolin: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next - (Hardcover)Īnother postmodern diatribe against modern physics and scientific method (2 stars)