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Lake Views: This World and the Universe: Difference between revisions
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Lake Views: This World and the Universe (view source)
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Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{review|Lake Views: This World and the Universe|Steven Weinberg|RIT637Z6HRC79|25 July 2011|Thin and complacent}} “I do not think we have to worry that giving up religion...") |
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This collection, especially so. The subjects are eclectic, but clumped: the quest for a final theory in elementary physics gets about four airings; why missile defence is a bad idea gets three; why manned space flight is an inferior use of public money than a particle accelerator (now fancy hearing a particle physicist say that!) gets a couple, and the collection is rounded out with a couple on Judaism and Israel, and a couple about the non-existence of God. (Yes, quite: I thought that jarred a bit, too). | This collection, especially so. The subjects are eclectic, but clumped: the quest for a final theory in elementary physics gets about four airings; why missile defence is a bad idea gets three; why manned space flight is an inferior use of public money than a particle accelerator (now fancy hearing a particle physicist say that!) gets a couple, and the collection is rounded out with a couple on Judaism and Israel, and a couple about the non-existence of God. (Yes, quite: I thought that jarred a bit, too). | ||
The collection's organising principle is no more inspiring than that they were all written in Weinberg's home study, overlooking a lake. Except, he tells us, it | The collection's organising principle is no more inspiring than that they were all written in Weinberg's home study, overlooking a lake. Except, he tells us, it isn’t actually a lake. | ||
Weinberg has an unshakeable conviction in the rectitude of his own [[research programme]]. This informs his view of the topics he canvasses and affords him licence to gloss over the many objections to his point of view. I had trouble with all that glossing. For example, I | Weinberg has an unshakeable conviction in the rectitude of his own [[research programme]]. This informs his view of the topics he canvasses and affords him licence to gloss over the many objections to his point of view. I had trouble with all that glossing. For example, I couldn’t see why it was a good use of tax money to sink 10 billion into a particle accelerator (super cooling 25 kilometres of electro magnets to absolute zero can’t be cheap) in the hope of credentialising a theory which, as stated by Weinberg, is unfalsifiable and plainly in crisis. | ||
On the other hand, putting a man on mars would at least give David Bowie<ref>Gawd rest him.</ref> an excuse to re-release his back catalog (not, of course, that he needs one). | On the other hand, putting a man on mars would at least give David Bowie<ref>Gawd rest him.</ref> an excuse to re-release his back catalog (not, of course, that he needs one). | ||
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These are not trivial problems. They’re barnstormers. Modern physics, that is to say, has many of the hallmarks of a [[research programme]] deeply in crisis: astrophysicists such as {{author|Peter Woit}} and {{author|Lee Smolin}} have published compelling books on the topic in the last decade. | These are not trivial problems. They’re barnstormers. Modern physics, that is to say, has many of the hallmarks of a [[research programme]] deeply in crisis: astrophysicists such as {{author|Peter Woit}} and {{author|Lee Smolin}} have published compelling books on the topic in the last decade. | ||
So it is an odd chair from which to find a practitioner making lofty declarations. Even Weinberg concedes that the outlook for convergence to one final theory is considerably less certain now than it was when he wrote it. Kind of makes you wonder why he | So it is an odd chair from which to find a practitioner making lofty declarations. Even Weinberg concedes that the outlook for convergence to one final theory is considerably less certain now than it was when he wrote it. Kind of makes you wonder why he didn’t trouble to update (or just omit) the offending article. | ||
All this hubris could be forgiven if there were insightful content elsewhere, but there isn’t much. Weinberg includes an essay about the history of military technology (intended as yet another assault on the missile defence issue). This is about as close as Weinberg gets to having anything new to say. But even this (largely concerned with whether the stirrup — which permitted a horseman to charge with a "couched" lance — really was the game-changer its proponents claimed) seems to me to fail badly for selection bias. “Because the stirrup was an exaggerated innovation, ergo so is (in this case) missile defence”. | All this hubris could be forgiven if there were insightful content elsewhere, but there isn’t much. Weinberg includes an essay about the history of military technology (intended as yet another assault on the missile defence issue). This is about as close as Weinberg gets to having anything new to say. But even this (largely concerned with whether the stirrup — which permitted a horseman to charge with a "couched" lance — really was the game-changer its proponents claimed) seems to me to fail badly for selection bias. “Because the stirrup was an exaggerated innovation, ergo so is (in this case) missile defence”. | ||
Now Weinberg is persuasive that missile defence is a waste of money (which isn’t exactly hard), but this argument about stirrups | Now Weinberg is persuasive that missile defence is a waste of money (which isn’t exactly hard), but this argument about stirrups doesn’t help him. For every stirrup there's a horse, rifle, canon or nuke, which really was a game changer. (There will, of course, be countless “stirrups” which have faded from history's pages for precisely the same reasons of selection bias, of course: rather like extra dimensions curling tinily into unseen universes). | ||
And so it goes on. Many of the essays are cursory, and most are infused with an exasperating certitude. We hear an impassioned plea for the restoration and defence of the Jewish state, book-ended with a vigorous piece of atheism. Again, a dissonance there: This might be naivety on my part but I had understood the Jewish connection to Israel to be a religious one (and as such I have no quarrel with it). But for an atheist? If there's no God, what is the special attraction of a land where people are lobbing missiles over your back fence all the time? | And so it goes on. Many of the essays are cursory, and most are infused with an exasperating certitude. We hear an impassioned plea for the restoration and defence of the Jewish state, book-ended with a vigorous piece of atheism. Again, a dissonance there: This might be naivety on my part but I had understood the Jewish connection to Israel to be a religious one (and as such I have no quarrel with it). But for an atheist? If there's no God, what is the special attraction of a land where people are lobbing missiles over your back fence all the time? | ||
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Anyhow - a touchy subject which I only raise to point out the internal dissonance. | Anyhow - a touchy subject which I only raise to point out the internal dissonance. | ||
I | I didn’t get much from this collection, other than the reinforcement of my hunch that modern particle physics has disappeared down a conceptual rabbit-hole (a worm-hole into another universe perhaps?) from which it is unlikely to re-emerge. | ||
In the mean time there are some splendid, challenging and batty books written by leading scientists, which provide enlightenment and unexpected entertainment. This | In the mean time there are some splendid, challenging and batty books written by leading scientists, which provide enlightenment and unexpected entertainment. This isn’t one of them. | ||