Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law , Peter Woit , Basic Books, New York, 2006. $26.95 (291 pp.). ISBN 0-465-09275-6
The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next , Lee Smolin , Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2006. $26.00 (392 pp.). ISBN 0-618-55105-0
Noted theoretical physicist Sheldon Glashow has famously likened string theory to medieval theology because he believes both are speculations that cannot be tested. Yet if readers believe Lee Smolin and Peter Woit, they might conclude that the more apt comparison is to the Great Disappointment of 1844, when followers of the Baptist preacher William Miller gave up all their worldly possessions and waited for the Second Coming. The empirical inadequacy of that prediction led to apostasy and schisms among thousands of Miller’s followers. At least one of the branches claimed that the event had in fact occurred, but in a heavenly landscape linked to the world of experience through only the weak but all-pervasive spiritual interaction. Yet irritating differences exist between Miller’s followers and the “disappointed” of the 1984 coming of the theory of everything; a majority of the latter seem to have preserved their faith and gained worldly fortune in the form of funding, jobs, and luxurious conferences at exotic locales. But to what extent are critics like Smolin and Woit believable?
The first two-thirds of Woit’s Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity is an exposition of 20th-century physics leading up to the standard model and then to string theory. The problem with this part of the book is that it constantly vacillates between highly technical writing and popular writing; a general reader would have trouble keeping up. But the main burden of the book is the remaining third in which Woit clearly states his grievance against string theorists. It would not be hard to believe that some string theorists are dogmatic or fanatical—even bordering on unethical — about their research program. But Woit seeks to make a larger case of widespread irrationality and dishonesty in the string community.
For Woit to succeed, he needs far better control over his rhetoric than he exhibits. A neutral reader willing to examine his case would doubt the full veracity of his arguments, in view of numerous straw men and digressions: the Bogdanov affair, John Hagelin’s transcendental meditation, and a desultory mix of anecdotes and private communications. Perhaps a case can be made for a serious reconsideration of the research program in high-energy theory. But critics who make that case need focus and must use temperate rhetoric, even if they feel strongly that their targets, the string theorists, do not always practice those virtues.
Smolin’s exposition of the physics in The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next is much better. Himself a sometime “stringer,” Smolin is enthusiastic and generous in describing the achievements of string theorists without letting his ultimate rejection of their project get in the way. In my opinion, if he is right that many of the best and brightest are seduced into this unpromising line of work and thus blinded to alternatives, then he indeed has reason to sound the alarm. I read for comparison Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions (Ecco, 2005) by Lisa Randall (see the review in Physics Today December 2005, page 59). Although Randall is not mainly a string theorist, she is clearly in a position to observe the state of the field and the community. The cultish behavior of string theorists that so alarms Smolin and Woit seems not to have registered as a problem to Randall. She is straightforward in what she thinks is speculative, what results might be checked empirically in the near future, and what are some undesirable lines of inquiry, untestable even in principle.
Surely a number of analogous controversies have occurred in the history of physics. The contest between S-matrix theory and quantum field theory in the 1960s comes to mind. Although Woit takes up that episode, unfortunately his attention is again on the sensational rather than on the substantial. Concerned as he is about the ill effects of hegemony in physics, Smolin could have undertaken a serious historical analysis. Instead, what readers get from his book is Whig history from the 18th century to the 1970s. He divides the period into 30-year chunks and claims that every generation has made major fundamental physical discoveries. The years assigned to his own generation (1975-2005), says Smolin, were years of stagnation. Neither the analysis nor the generational self-reproach is compelling. Yet the anxiety of being a member of a “failed” generation frames the book.
Smolin also worries that the dominance of a single subfield adversely affects the funding and nurturing of iconoclastic talent. However, he addresses the question of how to identify talent that does not get timely recognition in the mainstream by seemingly suggesting that he would know. Another thing Smolin does is to finesse the deflationary view of the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, that there is no such thing as the scientific method. Unlike many critics who have argued that on methodological grounds string theory is not science, Smolin recognizes that to impugn it for that reason, he must refute those who would say, “There are no methodological principles beyond ‘science is what scientists do.’ The rest is politics, networking, funding, or propaganda.”
I believe that arguments about methodological definitions of science are traps to avoid. To worry that physicists’ acceptance of string theory might make science indistinguishable from Millerism is an example of such a trap. A liberal view of methods in the short-term and a focus in the long-term on stability of descriptions, coherence with other parts of science, and empirical adequacy might be better places, albeit problematic ones, to start characterizing what science is. Smolin and Woit appear to think that it is time to cut the short-term benefit of the doubt for string theory, but many other physicists might be willing to let a little more time pass before rendering judgment.
Kannan Jagannathan is a professor of physics at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Though his background is in high-energy theory, he has no strong stake or expertise in string theory.
