Its something of a cliche at this point, but most everyone not in the string camp describes string theory as something of a philosophy or religion. The reason being: too many facets of the theory are far beyond our ability to test, or even untestable.

Loop quantum gravity theory (at least according to its advocats) answers as many questions as string theory, just as beautifully, but with the virtue of being testable in the near future.

The good news is that much of this will be made clearer when the Large Haldron Collider starts pumping out results next year. The bad news is there are so many different string theories, any number is bound to agree with experimental results, or if not a new theory will be crafted to do so.

...which is one of the more important "unscientific" points Smolin makes about string theory.

He has published a number of papers within string theory, and seems to believe that it could be made more scientific, but this is a development that worries him. And should, because it goes right to the heart of what science is.

Still, I quite liked this statement as a neat encapsualtion of scientific values at work:

"The field of fundamental theoretical physics is in trouble, and this book is about why. But I have enormous respect for everybody whose work I'm criticizing. If string theory is a mistake, it's not a trivial mistake. It's a deep mistake and therefore kind of worthy."

Most interesting link to Scientific Values: The Sense of Human Dignity... And it is spot-on about a basic failing of current Islamic culture, and why fundamentalist Islam is doomed to eventual failure. Within that culture, the questioning of any kind of authority is crushed... and the result can be seen in the modern Islamic world: They have made virtually no scientific and engineering advancements in modern times, unless you can count those occasions where they have bought the technology and scientists from the West. In spite of the money the rich Islamic countries have thrown at technical education, they continue to turn out third-rate students who have little in the way of original and innovative thought.

The fundamental Islamists will ultimately fail because all they have to offer is a society that will be static. All that we need to know has been revealed, so there would be no need for scientific research or technical innovation. And then, like a freshwater pond that has its source of fresh water cut off, it will become a stagnant thing uncapable of sustaining the life it once held.

Just my 4.02
DaveK

On that note (#3), Iranian President Ahmadinejad calls for a purge of liberal and secular teachers in Iran

"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities," the agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a meeting with a group of students. Ahmadinejad complained that changes in the country's universities were difficult to accomplish, but said, "The job for such a change has begun."

We still hear mainstream scientists call for non-funding of research, usually for those areas deemed outside the "mainstream of science." Sometimes I wonder how much of this is empirical and how much is based on herd mentality. But it's nothing like we see in Iran, that's for sure.

And for those of you wanting to know concrete examples, there have been quite a few alternative theories of gravity put forward over the last couple of decades. It seems, however, that some ideas like string theory have a certain political momementum of their own, and must play themselves out over time. BTW, Scientific American had a great book review on the criticisms of string theory last month.

basic failing of current [leftist] culture, and why fundamentalist [leftism] is doomed to eventual failure. Within that culture, the questioning of any kind of authority is crushed... and the result can be seen in the modern [Democrat Party]:

Just ask Joe Lieberman, Zell Miller, Sam Nunn, et al.

Re: #5, Bart Hall

...heh!

DaveK

Leftists are as orthodox as radical Muslims, but they deny it.

DaveK: And it is spot-on about a basic failing of current Islamic culture, and why fundamentalist Islam is doomed to eventual failure.

Yeh. The only question is will that be before civilization collapses, the cause of civilization's collapse, or after civilization collapses.

;-)

Have you read Bronowski's, "Magic, Science, and Civilization"?

It's out of print, but available. Written in 1980, in one brief observation he anticipates today's most culturally significant event. He notes that science has put such power into the hands of anyone who cares to learn enough to use it that no longer can an iron box protect our wealth or barred doors protect our family.

He reminds us that the singular human trait is the ability to recognize a pattern and, from that pattern, project possible futures. That insight is the tool to create society, if we have the will, even across cultural boundaries.

Regards/Stephen

I kind of like the fact that Maxwell's equations are byproducts of certain string theories.

String theory might be right, or it might be wrong, but calling it "weird" doesn't get Mr Smolin any points in my book.

My degrees are in things like rocks and dirt. With quantum physics we're talking about a discipline that has spent decades determinining the "flavour" of quarks -- some of which are "charmed" and others of which are merely "strange."

Of course we can't actually isolate quarks because they're confined inside particles like protons by a "strong force colour charge" which they share with other particles called "gluons" (as in glue) which have neither mass nor charge.

So you've got particles (some of which are really only "force fields") wrapped up inside particles, out of which you build atoms ... but string theory which proposes essentially the same thing for the dimensions we can see is "weird ?"

All of quantum physics is weird. Big time. The fact that they can continue to apply a more-or-less classic scientific discipline to such a bizarre field is testimony to the remarkable robustness of that scientific method.

The widespread tendency in the sciences is to look for contradictory evidence and hash things out politely. That doesn't mean things don't get cranky or petty on occasion, but the comparison to politics is striking. Politics could benefit greatly from abundant application of the scientific method, coupled with a recognition that cause and effect are usually separated in both time and space.

Compared to politics, quantum physics is a paragon of logic, stability, and just plain normalness.

I think thats being overly harsh. You are right, quantum field theory has been described as weird by most everyone that has worked on it or studied it, but the flip side to that coin is why is it not ok to call string theory weird as well?

I think the problems Smolin has with string theory are valid- and the issues he considers 'inordinately' weird are valid as well. The ever expanding number of dimensions required is weird, no two ways about it (and no end in sight).

I havent read this book yet, but i have read his previous Three Roads to Quantum Gravity and i found it to be lucid and professional. I never noticed him taking unfair wacks at string theory. I have the feeling this is a tempest in a teapot, with a few select quotes given too much attention.

Scientists are people. People are political.

Science, yes, is logical, methodological, and exact. The practice of science -- where real people get to vote to fund various intiatives, where Congress decides who to placate, where editors decide who they think are adequate reviewers -- is political. All interactions among people are political, whether rooted in exact science or not.

I love those quantum gravity meetings. I never know if I'm attending or not, even when it's happening. So I just tell people that there is a probability that I'm there, as well as not.

Mark: I'm simply saying that to call string theory "weird" is gratuitous and doesn't cut it in a discipline so patently weird as quantum physics. That said, the ever-expanding number of dimensions BTW reminds me very much of the old epicycle theory of orbital mechanics ... they had the idea of orbits down okay to a first approximation, but their point of reference was flooey.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if some shift in point of reference arises that makes dimensions problem settle down significantly. It would it surprise me if the whole thing turns out to be nonsense. Back in the '60s we went down quite a few blind alleys with the then-emrging understanding of global tectonics but the overall direction of the thing was generally correct.

Most things seem to move from a state of naive simplicity to confusing complexity and then (eventually) to profound simplicity. Quantum physics is somewhere between those last two, but I don't know enough about the discipline to say just where.

Quantum physics is weird because the world doesn't work in familiar ways when the distance scales get small. The weirdness of the theory is driven by the results of experiments. The weirdness of the jargon (flavor, charm, etc) is driven by the physicists' sense of humor.

I'm an experimentalist, not an expert on string theory (so salt to taste), but the theory has always had a top-down feel to me: "X is the problem; if we assume Y then the problem goes away; so let's see what we can do to make Y true." Unfortunately this requires a weird number of space-time dimensions, and even then doesn't do a good job at predicting anything. Color me skeptical.

If you want more info, look at "Not Even Wrong" at
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

"Mark: I'm simply saying that to call string theory "weird" is gratuitous and doesn't cut it in a discipline so patently weird as quantum physics."

I will let the irony of the above soak in. I think the point is, the term 'weird' is not necessarilly a pejorative in physics.

As to the rest, Smolin's entire thesis in 3 Roads to Quantum Gravity was that string theory, loop quantum gravity, and various other theories that dont fall under either could very well be different ways of describing the same thing. I think that is what you are suggesting, and rest assured Smolin is not dismissing that (unless he has decided to completely refute his previous work).

I think Smolin is more concerned with how the politics of physics work at universities and research institutions, at the expense of other promising directions.

In response to your title: Yes, it is.

Actually, if Smolin is correct, it isn't wrong. Worse, it isn't even right... that is to say, it isn't testable and well-formed enough to be a solid theory yet in the scientific tradition. So "wrong" and "right" don't mean much when discussing it; if the data doesn't fit, just make up another string theory that does fit.

There may be something to string theory, who knows? Certainly, Smolin does not claim to know, and so he doesn't rule it out. But given string theory's state and M.O., Smolin's recommendation that other explanations and theories should also get serious attention would appear to have something going for it.

THE ASSUMPTION THAT DESTROYED PHYSICS

In "Beyond String Theory" in his book "The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Thory, the Fall of a Science, And What Comes Next" Lee Smolin asks:

". . . I believe there is something basic we are all missing, some wrong assumption we are all making. If this is so, then we need to isolate the wrong assumption and replace it with a new idea. What could this wrong assumption be?"

The answer:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/www/ :
"...light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body."

See also:

http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm
"Shatter this postulate [of constancy of the speed of light], and modern physics becomes an elaborate farce!"
Einstein: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false."
Einstein: "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept,i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics."

See also the discussion in

http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2006/02/testing_times_for_einsteins_th.html

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com

HOW STRING THEORISTS AVOID THE IMPERFECTIONS OF EINSTEIN

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/einstein-may-have-started-rot.html Motl: "Einstein may have started the rot"...what string theory is doing is nothing else than continuing in Einstein's program of theoretical physics, while AVOIDING ALL OF HIS KNOWN IMPERFECTIONS."

Divine Albert taught that the speed of light varied with the gravitational potential but did not vary with the relative speed of the light source and the observer, and in Chapter 22 in his "Relativity" explained why this combination of variability and invariability was not an idiocy. Motl and his brothers string theorists agree that the combination is not an idiocy and conclude that Einstein did not start the rot (someone else, perhaps the late Bryan Wallace http://www.ekkehard-friebe.de/wallace.htm , must have started it). On the other hand, brothers string theorists suspect that Divine Albert's combination of variability and invariability, although not an idiocy, is still an imperfection. So they always avoid it by looking for sand, sticking their heads and exposing other parts of their bodies.

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com