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Physics: Superstitions and Allegories?
Unpublished, 05 January 2015
The greatest story of our time may also be the greatest mistake. This is the story of our universe from the Big Bang to now with its bizarre, Dickensian cast of characters – black holes, tiny vibrating strings, the warped space-time continuum, trillions of companion universes and particles that wink in and out of existence.
It is the story told by a long list of officially accredited geniuses from Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking. It is also the story that is retold daily in popular science fiction from Star Trek to the latest Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster Interstellar. Thanks to the movies, the physicist standing in front of a vast blackboard covered in equations became our age’s symbol of genius. The universe is weird, the TV shows and films tell us, and almost anything can happen.
But it is a story that many now believe is pointless, wrong and riddled with wishful thinking and superstition.
“Stephen Hawking,” says philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, “is not part of the solution, he is part of the problem.”
The equations on the blackboard may be the problem. Mathematics, the language of science, may have misled the scientists.
“The idea,” says physicist Lee Smolin, “that the truth about nature can be wrestled from pure thought through mathematics is overdone… The idea that mathematics is prophetic and that mathematical structure and beauty are a clue to how nature ultimately works is just wrong.”
And in an explosive essay published last week in the science journal Nature astrophysicists George Ellis and Joe Silk say that the wild claims of theoretical physicists are threatening the authority of science itself.
“This battle for the heart and soul of physics,” they write, “is opening up at a time when scientific results — in topics from climate change to the theory of evolution — are being questioned by some politicians and religious fundamentalists. Potential damage to public confidence in science and to the nature of fundamental physics needs to be contained by deeper dialogue between scientists and philosophers….The imprimatur of science should be awarded only to a theory that is testable. Only then can we defend science from attack.”
Unger and Smolin have also just gone into print with a monumental book – The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time – which systematically takes apart contemporary physics and exposes much of it as, in Unger’s words, “an inferno of allegorical fabrication.” The book says it is time to return to real science which is tested against nature rather than constructed out of mathematics. Physics should no longer be seen as the ultimate science, underwriting all others. The true queen of the sciences should be history – the biography of the cosmos.
So when did it all go so horribly wrong? The critics would say in 1984 when a new idea – superstrings – suddenly seemed to offer physicists an escape from a dead end left behind by Einstein.
The physicist Brian Greene describes superstring theory as “a sweeping movement that inspired thousands of physicists worldwide to drop their research in progress and chase Einstein’s long-sought dream of a unified theory. The field was young, the terrain fertile and the atmosphere electric.”
Superstrings are tiny loops at the heart of every particle. The way they vibrate determines what the particle is and how it behaves. If they existed then they could solve the mystery left behind by Einstein – how to unite all the forces in the universe in a single theory. They might crack the most embarrassing problem of all. Einstein’s relativity, which describes the behaviour of large objects like planets, and quantum mechanics, which describes the behaviour of very small objects, are the two great achievements of twentieth century science. They both seem to be true, but, embarrassingly, they contradict each other. Perhaps superstrings would be the solution.
Well, in a way, it worked. Superstrings produced some of the most complex and, to its supporters, beautiful mathematics ever devised. It even, in theory, solved all the problems. But only in theory because to make the theory work, scientists had to invent a world with more than three dimensions and millions of other universes – the so-called ‘multiverse’. Since the strings themselves are too small for us to see, the additional dimensions are locked away beyond the gaze of our most powerful instruments and the other universes are completely undetectable. In other words, no experiment or observation of these things would be possible; to believe the solutions of string theory you had to believe in the maths alone. And that’s where it all starts to fall apart.
“As we see it,” write Ellis and Silk about this development, “theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man’s-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.”
To the critics, the idea that we should believe solely in the mathematics is, first, a betrayal of science and, secondly, a demonstrable absurdity. It is a betrayal because science has always been the development of hypotheses in the mind or in the lab which are then tested against what we can find in nature – any theory must be falsifiable by nature or it is metaphysics, faith or superstition.
Outside physics, this definition is intact and the dangers of relying on maths are obvious. In climate science, for example, mathematical models have repeatedly been proved wrong – most spectacularly in their failure to predict the pause in global warming over the last two decades. By the rigorous and effective standard of testing against nature and falsifiability, superstring theory cannot be science.
Relaying on mathematics is demonstrably absurd because it makes two unprovable assumptions – that maths can accurately describe the universe and, even if that is true, that our maths at this particular moment is good enough to do it.
Faced with these problems defenders of the faith – like the physicist Sean Carroll – have argued that it is time we loosened our definition of science to include purely mathematical proofs. This is a serious – indeed, a reckless – escalation that turns what was a skirmish into outright war in which there will be many more casualities than just superstring theory.
Unger and Smolin’s book, for example, swings a wrecking ball through almost the whole of contemporary physics from Einstein onwards. They insist on three principles – there is only one universe, time is real and mathematics is limited – that would, if accepted, not only cause a revolution in physics but in the whole of science. Most importantly, they would displace physics as the queen of the sciences. Instead the real, experimentally and observationally demonstrable, history of the cosmos would become science’s new gold standard.
The multiverse, in particular, comes in for a kicking.
“The multiverse,” says Unger, “treats these imaginary worlds as if they were real worlds. That’s the sleight of hand of particle physics.” And in popular sci-fi – “As the fabricated universes become real, the actual universe becomes less real.”
The multiverse has, in fact, been used three times to plug a gap – in the inflationary theory of the universe, in quantum theory and in string theory. Each time it is an attempt to explain why our universe just happens to be the way it is. But, surely, this is cheating. If, say Unger and Smolin, our theories don’t work, then we should ditch the theories, not invent imaginary and forever undetectable worlds.
Bizarrely, these worlds are invented by people who are forced to admit that their theories can’t actually work and full accounts of the universe. The conditions at the heart of a ‘singularity’ – in the Big Bang or in black holes – are said to lie beyond the laws of physics, so, in other words, the supposedly unchanging laws of physics only work by encompassing their own limitations.
If, as Unger and Smolin insist, time is real and not simply an aspect of space or of our perceptions, then the laws of physics begin to look even less solid. If everything is subject to time and, therefore, change, then these laws can evolve. They suggest the idea that these laws are eternally fixed is a supersition caused by mathematics – all the insights of maths are timeless and maths is only a human creation. In fact, two of the greatest physicists of all time – Richard Feynman and Paul Dirac – both accepted the possibility that the laws of physics evolve through time. Yet eternal, immutable physical laws, somehow detached from our physical universe, remain one of the primary superstitions of our age.
Even the cherished Big Bang may not survive the return of real time. There may, instead, have been a Big Squeeze, a moment at which our universe shrank and then expanded again. Time did not begin, as the physicists have been telling us, at the Big Bang, it passed serenely on through the Big Squeeze, as did our own universe.
But, I ask Smolin, how many people now accept the case of the critics?
“I would divide my community into two parts,” he says, “the people who try to think carefully about where we are, where we are going and why we have not made so much progress and everybody else. There are a remarkable number of people in the first group who at least partly agree with us. But there are a number of very deep thinkers who disagree. We are a minority but my sense is that a lot of people haven’t thought it through.”
Does any of this matter to you? All of it does. The rise of physics to the throne of ultimate science since the early twentieth century has, inevitably, affected ordinary life with its assumptions and not just in sci-fi. For example, contemporary determinism – the idea that everything that happens is inevitable and that our free will is an illusion – springs from twentieth century physics and has, most recently, infected neuroscience.
Perhaps more damagingly, the idea that the human mind, unaided except by mathematics, can encompass the universe has downgraded nature and deluded us into thinking we can do anything. We can’t. Nature – human or otherwise – is the only standard by which we or our ideas can be tested. The rest is just chalk on a blackboard.
61 Responses to “Physics: Superstitions and Allegories?”
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14 January 2015 at 8:31 pm
There seems to be a miscue, in the idea of how math is used in speculative physics, specifically here:
“Outside physics, this definition is intact and the dangers of relying on maths are obvious. In climate science, for example, mathematical models have repeatedly proved wrong – most spectacularly in their failure to predict the pause in global warming over the last two decades. By the rigorous and effective standard of testing against nature and falsifiability, superstring theory cannot be science.”
To use climate science as a parallel to how physicists use math(s) in the development of superstring theory is wrong at heart. The use of mathematics is everywhere in science, including in what is verifiable, say in the simplest chemistry experiment. It’s maths that tell us that Euclidean views of the universe break down, and it’s the math that is telling us now that there may have been a Big Squeeze versus a Big Bang.
For scientists to ignore what speculative physicists are coming up with is to, well, to put blinders on–but in service to what politics? It becomes a problem of arrogance, a terribly unscientific attitude of–if science cannot test something, then it has no meaning for existence.
Mathematical models are used in economics. You want the economy of the world to collapse, and pronto? Throw out the imperfect models. We now know, that we should be on the lookout in our models for black swan events. We have not learned to throw away our models.
If it is to be found that physical laws change through time, we will know this from the mathematical data. We will then create mathematical models to attempt to capture specifically what is changing and how it might affect us. We should then brace ourselves for the world and science fiction to revel in some decades of whatever the ignorance is in the models that results, until better ones come along.
That superstring theory and the idea of multiverses has revealed to us that there very well may be, just as we all should have known going into the 20th Century, there very well may be things in existence or in potentiality that we may never be able to test, or that science will be completely mistaken about. (Are eggs the worse thing or the best thing to eat now?)
Instead of throwing out what we do not and may never understand, as if it does not exist, it is within the utility of science to inquire as to how can the limits of what we know, or can ever know, or be forever wrong about, inform us in our human condition.
I have a malady that, fortunately, there are medical scientists in a few countries, trying to get to the bottom of — no cure, just a modicum of alleviation possible in the present state of funding and studies. And I am not the only one, of course. I venture to say that there are some millions of us, if not billions. This is a statement of the limitations of bio-medical science. Furthermore, there are poorly defined maladies that the best medical scientists are essentially ignorant of.
The worst doctors look at such patients and deny there is a problem — and they justify themselves by saying that medical science has not defined it. There are others who completely mis-categorize or mis-diagnose, sometimes because the best medical scientists have no idea how to broach these illnesses and problems.
What medical science does, as do other sciences, is to work on what science has broken through–what they are successful at in mass numbers of patients, why they are godsends to so many people, day in, day out. If you have a stroke, then this gets treated in such-and-so way. If you have a broken leg, this gets treated in another way, cancer yet another way. Each one a specialty that yields great results for the most part, in saving lives and alleviating suffering. But it is an extremely fragmented system of specialists with massive missing pieces, people suffering and dying before, not bad, but both ignorant doctors and scientists.
An important part of the scientific process is the hypothesis. It is then the process within science, not only to test them but create them. Speculative physicists do a great service for us, keep us all humble, in trying to define what we may never know, keeping us humble, and keeping us striving.
15 January 2015 at 3:03 am
Neither the idea that the human mind can encompass the universe, nor the idea that it can’t, is decidable by observation or experiment, or ever will be, so neither is decidable in science.
Is either conjecture useful? The former may be, in the limited sense that it can motivate us to keep pressing on. The latter, not so much.
Perhaps string and multiverse theories can be shown to be as untestable as the proposal that the universe is beyond the human mind’s capacity. So far as I’m aware, we’ve no such proof as yet. Till we do, we owe it to ourselves and each other to treat such conjectures seriously but sceptically.
15 January 2015 at 4:30 am
Te author claims that “For example, contemporary determinism – the idea that everything that happens is inevitable and that our free will is an illusion – springs from twentieth century physics and has, most recently, infected neuroscience.” This is demonstrably wrong. The assumption that there is no free will, i.e. that everything is strictly determined, goes back far in history. Einstein for example based his belief that free will is an illusion on Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century German philosopher. See my article:http://krohde.wordpress.com/article/arthur-schopenhauer-ethics-and-theory-xk923bc3gp4-106/
An excerpt here:
“As pointed out in earlier sections of the World as Will and Perception, individuality is a feature of the perceived world, but not of the thing-in-itself. Therefore: “Death is a sleep in which individuality is forgotten: everything else awakens, or rather has stayed alive”. Deep sleep, while it lasts, differs from death only with respect to the awakening. The will, the thing-in-itself, is One (i.e., all individuals will join it after their death), and it (its intelligible character) is free, since it is not subject to the categories of causality, time and space. The empirical character however, as perceived by us, is strictly, in all details, determined. Everybody considers himself a priori free in the sense that he is able to perform any action, and he learns to know his own character only a posteriori, by experience. That is, “the intellect experiences the decisions of his will only a posteriori and empirically. He has, before a decision, no information (“datum”) about what decision the Will will make.” “The claim of an empirical freedom of Will ….. is a consequence of the misguided attempt to place the essence of man into a soul…” In this context Schopenhauer’s introduction of the term acquired character (in addition to the intelligible and empirical character) is interesting: it is a human’s character (whether our own or that of others) with all its strengths and weaknesses revealed by long experience.”
15 January 2015 at 4:43 am
[…] “The idea that the truth about nature can be wrestled from pure thought through mathematics is overdone… The idea that mathematics is prophetic and that mathematical structure and beauty is a clue to how nature ultimately works is just wrong.” – Physicist Lee Smolin, from “Physics: Superstitions and Allegories?“ […]
15 January 2015 at 5:54 am
This seems to be a complaint that science cannot lay out absolute and final truths and proposes theoretical possibilities that cannot, at the moment be tested to affirm totally its proposals. No serious scientist would ever claim that science cannot make mistakes. The history of science is one of discovering errors and how vital those errors have been in discovering further workable understandings of the nature of reality. And the proposal that the universe is totally at the command, eventually, of the human mind is nothing anybody can claim rationally. Humans do the best they can, and the current technology now available out of science is doing remarkable things in humanity which testifies that science is surely on the right track. Mathematics is not science, it is a tool that can explore, not only the relationships within known understandings, but also investigate with precision other yet unknown possibilities that may be determined by further investigation. In effect, humans are creating a responsive universe through their sciences and that it produces useful results is quite sufficient. There is little doubt that there may be other ways of perceiving the universe but to be aware of our limitations does not negate that humanity must find its own way.
15 January 2015 at 5:56 am
There is at least one structurally incomplete sentence and one spelling mistake in this article. It’s not that this in itself is a problem, the malformed sentence and the spelling error can easily be figured out. The thing is that this is evidence of how little effort writers make in checking their own work and that is partly due to the influence of web publishing. The implications are that not only are articles poorly written, but the thinking and the research that underlies them is also subject to doubt.
15 January 2015 at 8:13 am
Appleyard isn’t qualified to write about physics.
15 January 2015 at 10:43 am
Stating flatly that there has been a “pause in global warming over the last two decades” as if this is established fact is contrary to the evidence:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/feb/12/global-warming-fake-pause-hiatus-climate-change
As to the general thesis here that physics is based on the proposition that the human mind can comprehend every detail of the universe: I can’t imagine any physicist actually making such a claim. A more realistic description would that it’s based on the notion that understanding as much of reality as we can is useful. The latter statement, which is far more in line with reality, would be fairly difficult to dispute.
15 January 2015 at 10:47 am
“They suggest the idea that these laws are eternally fixed is a supersition caused by mathematics – all the insights of maths are timeless and maths is only a human creation.”
First, the fixity of natural law is not treated superstitiously, if by that you mean without examination. Every year or so, there is some delicate experiment done, trying to see if natural constants vary over time. They have yet to be observed doing so. If it’s the algebraic form of the laws that is at issue, changes in that ought to be even more obvious.
Second, how much math is merely a human construct is one of the central issues of the philosophy of mathematics. Most mathematicians hold that things like the laws of arithmetic are discovered, not made. Of course, those laws are qualitatively different from laws describing the physical world, a distinction that that paragraph skates over.
15 January 2015 at 11:43 am
“contemporary determinism – the idea that everything that happens is inevitable and that our free will is an illusion – springs from twentieth century physics” Not really. Classical Newtonian physics is more detrministic than contemporary quantum physics. Nothing happened in 20th century physics to make determinism more attractive than it had been in the 19th century.
15 January 2015 at 12:22 pm
isn’t the LHC corroborating predictions that were posited by mathematics? Don’t the two go hand in hand? It just seems to me a matter of where resources are applied. that’s worthy of debate.
15 January 2015 at 12:49 pm
Although I am not a physicist and could never do more than watch with fascination the ‘findings’ about the universe or universes thrown up by mathematical calculations and disseminated through articles and books, yet I found your article interesting and hence felt an impulse to write a response with two elements in my response:
1. The career-graph of physics you have described was paralleled by psychology to some extent. First, Freud gave his theory of psychoanalysis that tried to give a mega interpretation of everything. Then, there was a reaction and the Behaviourists began to insist that science must only analyse the observable. But the observable limited the study of behaviour and the mind so badly that the more philosophical approaches entered by the backdoor. Today, even parapsychology is a branch of scientific psychology. Perhaps physics is reaching the end of a phase where the ‘concretists’, if I may coin a new word, are insisting upon the universe as we know it. Your main premise that once you begin to accept the existence of facts that cannot be verified by our age-old (or, shall I say, primary) scientific equipment called senses (plus, may be logic), you can virtually accept anything. The result could be a body of knowledge that sustains itself and expands itself by its internal dynamics without any need for external support and may not lend itself to verification for a thousand years.
2. My second point is: Hindu religion which, among all religions of the world, talks of ‘yuga’ and ‘yugantara’ where these yugas are millions of years long, also talks of the cyclical destruction and recreation of the universe —– what you call expansion and contraction. In Hinduism it is described as the tasks performed by a trinity, where Brahma creates, Vishnu preserves and then Siva destroys the universe. All three are aspects of the Supreme Power called Ishwarah.
Could it be that the Hindu ideas have traveled down from a stage in human civilisation when man had discovered a lot more about the universe than what we know now? Or could this be knowledge brought at some stage by humans from another planet? I believe that a deeper study of the Hindu scriptures might throw up findings that change our ideas about the universe. In my studies of the Yog Sutras I have found techniques of meditation which I could understand only in the light of modern knowledge about neurology. And these are highly scientific.
15 January 2015 at 3:24 pm
An excellent and thought provoking piece. Thanks to aldaily.com for directing me to it.
Is truth the correct criteria by which to judge scientific theories? That may seem an odd question to some but it is important to recall that Quantum Theory, the Theory of Relativity and all of our other capital T theories of nature are, regardless of their complexity, really just simplified models of nature. There is an aphorism that goes “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” Those models of nature that are found to be extremely useful are given the special status of Theory with a capital T. I recall reading that Einstein once said that in his opinion the only Theory of which he was aware that would not be supplanted in the future by a better (i.e., more useful) one is Statistical Mechanics. While the arguments that scientists have with each other may appear to be about Truth I think that most scientists are well aware that the argument is really about utility. Which theory will point our research in the most useful new direction? Which theory better encourages new questions we have never even thought of asking before? I see Brian Greene’s recent piece in Smithsonian as an argument for the utility of String Theory not its truth. He is making an argument that String Theory really deserves that capital T. This view of science and scientific research was elaborated by Stuart Firestein in his book “Ignorance” and I would recommend that to anyone interested in the practical reality of research.
If you are arguing that we will never have a Theory that deserves to be called Truth with a capital T then I think that many scientists would (or certainly ought to in my opinion) agree. The problem is that most scientists think that to admit that to the public would undermine confidence in science and, more importantly, negatively effect funding of basic research. That, unfortunately, is probably true.
15 January 2015 at 3:58 pm
Bryan Appleyard makes a mess of his potentially interesting topic by confusing physics with a recent fad within physics called “string theory”. It is only in string theory that some – and even there it is only some – go so far as to abandon the interplay between theory and experiment that is the hallmark of science, in physics as in all other natural sciences.
It is simply laughable to claim that there are “three principles – there is only one universe, time is real and mathematics is limited – that would, if accepted, not only cause a revolution in physics but in the whole of science” (Mathematics being “limited” here stands for it being only a tool whose results are tested empirically). Those three principles have been part of physics and the rest of science from the very start, and were abandoned only by string theory in recent times.
They do not need to be “accepted” by non-string physics, nor the rest of the natural sciences, because they have always been part of them and never abandoned by them. So no “revolution” on the horizon there, it is only for string theory that they make a difference, because it – or some in string theory – have abandoned them.
15 January 2015 at 4:16 pm
As the lamest of laymen, may I express my gratitude to both the author and Mr. Bowden for choosing to discuss these arcane topics in language that reasonably educated people outside the sciences can understand?
I have a nodding acquaintance with statistical modeling, and I too feel that the author’s argument suffered from the use of climate modeling as an example of the fallibility of mathematics. Uncertainty is a fundamental and well understood part of predictive analytics, so a better example should have come to mind.
With that said, I feel I have a new insight into an important issue. I don’t think I’m ready to take the position that anything untestable is indistinguishable from religious faith, but to the extent that new untestable things tend to ramify out from existing untestable things, the image of a house of cards becomes inescapable. Perhaps an openness to these things coupled with an eye on the limitations inherent in a world with only maths as its foundation is a reasonable position for those of us who are lamentably unqualified to arrive at certainty.
15 January 2015 at 5:11 pm
As usual, a philosopher demonstrates his total lack of understanding of theoretical physics. As Russ Bowden points out, nobody is implying the various hypothesis concerning cosmic reality are considered a closed and proven subject. Many are working on the problem of testing the various implications of string theory. It is presently impossible due to the limitations of today’s technology to probe the incredibly small distances involved. This will change and we shall see. If the evidence does not support our speculations, we shall move on. At one time people believed lightning was caused by the manipulation of Mjllnr, Thor’s hammer, by Thor. It was as good as any other idea. The instrumentation of the time was not able to confirm or deny the hypothesis. There were quite a few “philosophers” who had very compelling arguements both pro and con for the proposition. The concept predicted when technology improved to a certain point (i.e. binoculars) we would look skyward and actually see Thor in his glory, pounding out lightning with his trusty hammer. The day came, we looked…no Thor. We moved on. Math is an “if”…”then” proposition. If the first part of the equation is false, the entire equation is false. Achieving testability provides the validation or negation of the “if” part of the equation. Only fools think otherwise. (and philosophers). Nobody I know thinks string theory is a done deal. Its a rich area of possible explanation for observed phenomena and someday we shall see if it is valid or not. I have yet to meet a philosopher with any sort of testable description of reality.
15 January 2015 at 6:06 pm
Oh dear, another cultural commentator who didn’t pay attention to his school science lessons drops the ball. There hasn’t been a two decade “pause” in global warming, there has been, perhaps, a slow down in the rate of warming, which is what happened in the middle of the 20th century. As all serious models expect the rate of warming to vary, depending on all kinds of factors, where we are at any given moment does not and can not demonstrate model failure. It would only take a couple more warm years (2005, 2010 and 2014 were all very warm) for scientists to start wondering whether those models you mention were running a bit cold.
15 January 2015 at 6:58 pm
Science is a human socio political activity and is as riven as any other. This whole crisis reminds me of the ferment in late medieval Catholicism. The corruption of that priesthood lead to a discarding of the whole enterprise. And just as it was then so it is today: science is a priesthood that demands that it be kowtowed to as the only show in town.
It is no seamless robe, a metaphor used by the Medieval Church. It is a patchwork quilt, a mixed bag of fad fantasy and philosophic assumption which, when all these are unacknowledged renders the brew toxic.
Oh, I do not deny that technology has improved our material lives, but to look only at that to sing encomia to science is to deny that patchy nature of the thing
15 January 2015 at 7:00 pm
The development of General Relativity, which is a well tested theory with falsifiable predictions and no contrary evidence, was only possible because of centuries (actually, millennia) of mathematical investigations in geometry. The non-Euclidean geometry that underlies it was discovered by thought alone – no-one has ever observed the hyperbolic plane, and arguably the discovery was the bedrock of a new understanding of mathematical modelling. Up to that point the question was “How do objects move in this Euclidean Universe”, and careful observation and deep mathematical thinking led to Newton’s of motion. Once Gauss and others had discovered hyperbolic geometry the question became, “which mathematical model of geometry best fits the Universe we perceive and how do objects move in it?” Just as it would be naive to think that thought experiments alone could reveal “truth” in physics, it would be extraordinarily short sighted to think that mathematics has revealed all that it can about the Universe. Physics and mathematics will continue together to suggest models and find ways to test both the hypotheses and the predictions they make. Strong theory may belong more firmly in the realms of mathematics for now, and it may remain there forever, but we can’t know that it will. One hundred and twelve years passed between Gauss’s letter to Bolyai about his discovery of an apparently consistent non-Euclidean geometry and the publication of Einstein’s paper “Einfluss der Schwerkraft auf die Ausbreitung des Lichtes”. A further 8 years passed before Eddington measured the apparent bending of light to give one of the first experimental tests of the theory. Within 60 years the GPS system was in orbit, using relativistic calculations to provide highly accurate and usable navigation support.
This article manages to suggest that mathematics is somehow damaging our pursuit of knowledge, but it gives no hint of what could replace it, or really why it should be replaced. It is good that physicists are now pausing to ask how the predictions of string theory could be tested. It is even better that they are asking if other models can be developed that fit the observations. It would be astonishing if they could do any of this without the close symbiotic relationship between mathematics and physics.
15 January 2015 at 7:10 pm
[…] Where Physics Went Wrong […]
15 January 2015 at 7:31 pm
These are, indeed, profound issues. My own view is that cosmology in particular is in an era of extraordinary speculation. I think there are many aspects of our surroundings that escape our notice simply because we are constrained by the limits of our senses, and the few extensions of them we have been clever enough to invent. As long as we keep clearly in mind that these speculations are not proven reality, I think there is little harm in them and, potentially, much stimulus for genuine progress. Theoretical models are just that — models. They do not constitute proof of reality no matter how sophisticated the mathematics. I think there is a distinct possibility that the mathematics might lead us in wrong directions; on the other hand, they might indeed point us in fruitful directions as well.
In any event, the debate on these points is very important. It should serve to keep us all aware that from the point of view of well grounded science, there is a reality that needs to be measured and understood. Speculation may help us find useful avenues for investigation but is not itself scientific fact.
15 January 2015 at 8:33 pm
I would affirm Mr. Bowden’s response. There’s no escaping the necessity to conceptualize our universe through mathematics and by generating hypothesis’ so that “harder” science may have a direction for further research. It is difficult to search for a solution if some semblance cannot first be imagined. We are at a breakout period in the evolution of humanity’s thinking on so many different levels. We can expect much more in the way of abstract thinking as we develop new ways to understand what will stretch us in ways not forseen. We can only hope we do not become extinct in the process or that because it so “blows our minds” that we become deniers. We know that humans have a set of beliefs they will defend and don’t like evidence to the contrary. There’s the rub. Humbly submitted.
15 January 2015 at 8:59 pm
Twentieth century did not destroy the idea of free will. Laplacian determinism–applying the logic of Newton’s laws did. To the contrary, 20th century physics–and the probabilistic logic of quantum mechanics on particular– destroyed determinism in physics.
15 January 2015 at 9:43 pm
I expect all the furious savagery of a Counter-Reformation.
15 January 2015 at 11:25 pm
[…] So do you want the multiverse or science? Anyway, as Bryan Appleyard tells it: […]
15 January 2015 at 11:38 pm
It is most interesting that Science has come to the place where there must be an acknowledgment of things which cannot be observed or measured. The ability to directly observe and measure used to form the difference between Science, Religion, and Philosophy.
Yet within the cosmology of multiple universes, multi-dimensions, science advocates are still adamant that God cannot exist. There is no room for a Creator, even while they, the scientists, create ever more speculative explanations for existence.
15 January 2015 at 11:51 pm
Disregard difficult pathways in math in favor of philosophy? Not proven yet, but not unreasonable to speculate that philosophy will prove to have been nothing more than a quaint pretty thing since Einstein and Skinner – but no more significant than belching and farting.
16 January 2015 at 12:50 pm
“Relaying on mathematics …” Proofreading is more of a headache than string theory for some people.
16 January 2015 at 9:48 pm
Of course, as Appleyard concludes, nature is the only standard by which our theories can be tested. But surely any scientist worth his salt knows that the physics or mathematics he employs is simply an incomplete shorthand language of explanation, always to be recursively modified to concur with nature? The scientist’s winning hand is the fantastically powerful predictive ability of his trade as the last 500 years has shown, even though we may increasingly dislike the conclusions being reached or the true nature of reality revealed.
16 January 2015 at 9:55 pm
Mr Appleyard, whose only qualification seems to be a degree in English, does not understand that all this mathematics which he so readily denigrates was developed initially to explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena observed through experiment.
16 January 2015 at 9:56 pm
Funding science through short time grants generates an endless series of successes. Every small step is a huge success even if the whole is a… mess. Science has been converted in just an other economic activity. Physics in the lab is expensive but maths is cheap. Proposing ‘new ways of doing science’ is just a demand for more lose grant evaluation. Fairy tales, cheating, lying, ‘anything goes’ and not just as Feyerabend thought…
16 January 2015 at 11:27 pm
Is it possible that the situation for string theory at present (not being testable) is similar to Maxwell’s equations when he originally propounded them (see http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/the-long-road-to-maxwells-equations)?
17 January 2015 at 1:04 am
Absolutely Mathematics is not the language of science- you can write any old crazy stuff with math. Its a tool that’s all. 1 pebble plus 1 boulder equal 2 neutrino mathematical correct physically nonsense. Newton didn’t use math to prove the law of gravity- he used objects- using math he could have come up with any old law.
17 January 2015 at 5:51 am
You think this purportedly monkeyoid brain might be so flawed by genetic “mistakes” that it will be unable to fathom the molecule and energy into which it came? I will not say in the end because how can one define “end.”
18 January 2015 at 8:33 pm
Foxes and hedgehogs will argue over TOEs but what blocks progress in cosmology and maybe all science is the lack of an experiment to determine whether space-time is discrete or continuous (as Einstein believed). If space-time is granular, models get simpler: all you need is the memory of the last discrete time-slice state of the universe, the present state, and an if-then-else argument to predict the future (determine mathematical laws). As an analog, nothing moves in a computer memory chip; state patterns are evolved as the system clock ticks. The sequentially accessed states interfaced to logic gates and IO gadgetry can project virtual reality you’d swear was real even this early in the game. An OS deity is optional. Dr. James C. Sung and others make a good case for a totally quantized universe.
18 January 2015 at 11:01 pm
‘There is only one universe’. Of course. You could look it up. The dictionary says universe=everything. When Mr. E said time is a new
dimension to consider, he meant ‘ an aspect of a situation’ not an additional length, width or height. We cannot conceive only two dimensions, except in theoretical geometry, yet we gleefully jump to four. And as for beginnings and endings, like a dog with calculus our minds are incapable of understanding eternity. Everything we know of
starts and ends so we believe everything must, but what about before or after that?
19 January 2015 at 4:59 pm
The fact that Mr. Appleyard, an English major, has more scientific sense than the current crop of public ‘experts’ in theoretical physics underscores the importance of a strong humanities background. On the other hand, it is impossible to adequately understand the following without a strong technical background: SensibleUniverse.net/slides
These slides directly address the issues Mr. Appleyard has so eloquently put forward.
19 January 2015 at 5:01 pm
The fact that Mr. Appleyard, an English major, has more scientific sense than the current crop of public ‘experts’ in theoretical physics underscores the importance of a strong humanities background. On the other hand, it is impossible to adequately understand the following without a strong technical background:
http://SensibleUniverse.net/slides
These slides directly address the issues Mr. Appleyard has so eloquently put forward.
19 January 2015 at 5:04 pm
Apropos my prior comment:
“Why English Majors are the Hot New Hires”
http://tinyurl.com/olemqgb
19 January 2015 at 5:47 pm
2014 was warmest year in history. assertions from science and math are evidence based and demand challenge from others who can produce evidence based facts to the contrary. the theory of evolution is fact; there are still many hypotheses about the details, which i believe is called evolutionary theory.
the whole premise of this article seems based on philosophy and vanity, therefore meaningless to evidence and fact based reality.
no, there is no debate on climate change. http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
19 January 2015 at 7:32 pm
Why consider leaving one method astray from the other? A huge point is missing in this article; the challenge to see beyond stigmatized beliefs and proofs in the name of any science or philosophical ideas. The phenomenology of spirit has a huge impact on this and it is time we succumb to that cornerstone of reality as well.
What says that metaphysics are not the reality most awarded our attention instead of anything else. In science, mathematics plays a devastating and determinate role without falsified objectives and wonder, yet it aligns very often with spiritual sensation. How come one strain of human thinking, the rational evolution of theories dominates the noosphere of our creation! The suggestion is to follow the same old road without having the philosophy aligned with the maths algorithm but mostly without the presence of our heart intelligence and spirituality. How come our closest ally, the intuit force that tells us all there is by simple frequency of love are not taken serious? How come that sensational wonder and experience is neglected in the name of a calculated type of thinking and knowing?
20 January 2015 at 6:27 pm
[…] Bryan Appleyard writes: The greatest story of our time may also be the greatest mistake. This is the story of our universe from the Big Bang to now with its bizarre, Dickensian cast of characters – black holes, tiny vibrating strings, the warped space-time continuum, trillions of companion universes and particles that wink in and out of existence. […]
22 January 2015 at 11:00 am
“Physics: Superstitions and Allegories?”
Just a dead science:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7266
Peter Woit: “I don’t think though that this will have any effect on multiverse mania and its use as an excuse for the failure of string theory unification. It seems to me that we’re now ten years down the road from the point when discussion revolved around actual models and people thought maybe they could calculate something. As far as this stuff goes, we’re now not only at John Horgan’s “End of Science”, but gone past it already and deep into something different.”
http://www.worddocx.com/Apparel/1231/8955.html
Mike Alder: “This, essentially, is the Smolin position. He gives details and examples of the death of Physics, although he, being American, is optimistic that it can be reversed. I am not.”
http://www.edge.org/response-detail/23857
Steve Giddings, theoretical physicist; Professor, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara: “What really keeps me awake at night (…) is that we face a crisis within the deepest foundations of physics. The only way out seems to involve profound revision of fundamental physical principles.”
http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/09/05/perimeter-institute-and-the-crisis-in-modern-physics/
Neil Turok: “It’s the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all.”
Defending the idea that the dead science is both alive and beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE
23 January 2015 at 3:26 am
It’s funny to see the offended physicists making a straw man argument (Appleyard is not a phycist so he can’t comment on this subject) instead of substantively refuting the substance of Appleyard’s post. Even more humorous: they seem to be ignorant of the fact that Appleyard is relating ideas presented by physicists (Smolin, Ellis, Silk). Fact is, this is all metaphysics (superstrings, multiverse, arguments about whether math is invented or discovered, etc.) and therefore science credentials are not required. Those with science credentials may be less reliable on these matters because they have invested a lifetime into the math=reality and particles-tell-the-entire-story scams and their status and self-esteem will take a tumble when society at large eventually figures out how unscientific science has become. Science describes; it does not explain.
24 January 2015 at 1:20 am
Steve Meikle says
Science is a human socio political activity and is as riven as any other. This whole crisis reminds me of the ferment in late medieval Catholicism. The corruption of that priesthood lead to a discarding of the whole enterprise. And just as it was then so it is today: science is a priesthood that demands that it be kowtowed to as the only show in town. [End Quote].
No it didn’t, and no it isn’t.
26 January 2015 at 8:08 pm
Einstein understood the awe of simply being present in the universe…and our compulsion to sustain our tribal existence and individual egos by any means of invention, technical, cruel or compassionate. The most effective technical invention to date is scientific method. That’s being weakened by the replacement of experimentation by computer simulations, which make unjustified assumptions about physics…a literal virtual reality. Not that I have anything against virtual reality if it leads to my immortality.
27 January 2015 at 11:40 pm
I agree with the principle that assertions about the world should be falsifiable, and should be supported by evidence.
I just wish that the author could apply the same principle to his own work before making ludicrous, dogmatic and unfalsifiable assertions, such as the claim that “the idea that the human mind, unaided except by mathematics, can encompass the universe has downgraded nature and deluded us into thinking we can do anything.”
28 January 2015 at 3:58 am
I agree with the author. Despite my deification of scientific method, how is an experiment going to falsify the hypothesis of neutron stars, which by the way is very suspect given the proposed angular momentum of some of those dudes (a better hypothesis is offered by some plasma physicists with a model of a relaxation oscillator to account for the pulses, not a lighthouse beam).
The human mind is barely out of the swamp. Except for the high level of development of the hubris lobe.
29 January 2015 at 10:59 am
This exchange is almost as fascinating as Bryan’s article, which was very fascinating. Arguments about the authority of a scientific theory between scientists and non-scientists in the public square are often fraught with hyper-defensiveness on one side and over-simplification on the other. But there is one argument some defenders of scientific orthodoxy are prone to make that steps over the boundary between science and scientism, and that is the one made by plantman13 above: I have yet to meet a philosopher with any sort of testable description of reality.
A theory can be defended on the basis of its explanation of evidence or perhaps its utility. It is perfectly fair to argue it is too early to either dismiss or embrace it. But it is not a credible defense of a theory to challenge the critic to come up with a better one and suggest his inability to do so gives it credence. Faute de Mieux is not a component of the scientific method.
The happens in arguments about Darwinism all the time. When critics argue the theory simply can’t explain all it claims to explain, it’s defenders will retort with some variation of “So, what’s your theory, Genesis?”, I’ve seen very bright scientists argue there is some kind of general intellectual obligation to accept this or that implausible conjecture because the critic’s answer is “Haven’t a clue.” and to hold to it until someone comes up with “a better theory”. That is not open scientific inquiry, it’s intellectual blackmail by a nervous establishment.
1 February 2015 at 10:52 am
Humans don’t perceive quantities because we invented a number system. Humans developed number systems from our perception of quantity.
Maths is so useful for physics because it’s derived from the natural laws of numerical relationships which govern the physical universe.
Early humans didn’t invent systems of number and maths, then discover they were useful for measuring and quantifying the physical world.
Early humans developed systems of number and maths from observation of how the physical world is naturally organised.
Numbers were originally descriptions of the various quantities – and the relationships between the numbers (that is, 1+2=3, for example) describe how those quantities relate to each other.
But, for *any* type of physical phenomena:
the quantity we call 1
put with the quantity we call 2
ALWAYS creates the quantity we call 3
This is a physical law.
Proportions and ratios of physical properties, such as quantity or magnitude, are inherently and naturally numerical.
The inherently numerical nature of proportions and ratios is the fundamental connection between mathematical laws and the physical universe.
Numbers and numerical relationships are not abstract concepts invented by humans, they are absolute laws of physics *described* by humans.
So, if human numbers are merely names for physical quantities, and numerical relationships merely describe the physical relationships between quantities… this would explain how human mathematics is so precisely useful for describing the physical universe.
But even then, physics can still evolve as the universe divides through time into ever increasing quantity of discrete constituents.
5 February 2015 at 5:09 pm
RE the post by Xi on February 1st:
That is the reason continuous spacetime as understodd in the Standard Model is such a problem…intervals must be arbitrarily assigned. For the proposition that numerical relationships are natural properties of the physical universe to be valid, spacetime must be discrete and granular.
14 February 2015 at 10:22 pm
[…] by Bryan Appleyard at The Sunday Times (non paywalled version here), another Bryan Appleyard piece here, and interviews with John Horgan and at Scientia Salon. In other news about Smolin, he’s one […]
16 February 2015 at 2:05 pm
I find the argument proposed in article here very muddled simply because the author repeatedly conflates theories that are backed by strong empirical evidence with ones that are not. So no mention of the mountains of evidence suggesting that our universe was once small and hot (what the term BB actually means to physicists). Indeed, the author seems something of cosmology skeptic, which is a different sort of argument…also the point about determinism at the end of the piece is entirely in error, not at all true of 20th century physics
23 March 2015 at 8:01 pm
Is it testability of falsiability? Although to tell the truth I didn’t think an y but the most naive scientists would still talk that way, let alone use it in such an ignorant sentence as “any theory must be falsifiable by nature or it is metaphysics, faith or superstition.”
29 March 2015 at 2:09 pm
[…] Has mathematics mislead science? Smolin and Unger makes the case. […]
16 April 2015 at 5:11 pm
[…] https://bryanappleyard.com/physics-superstitions-and-allegories/ […]
26 April 2015 at 6:56 am
During my undergraduate degree, my Quantum Mechanics professor gave me one of the most significant pieces of advice I would learn as a physicist: “Physics has two aspects. The first is to push the boundaries of science and probe our world without betraying the logic and intuition of justifiable reasoning. The second is to be able to communicate those truths that are empirically, theoretically, or otherwise found in such a way that they may be shared, understood, and preserved alongside the history of our existence. Politicians and journalists make these goals near impossible.”
Mr. Appleyard is not qualified to comment on the reliability, and extent therein, of the use of mathematics in the sciences as his training and experience is not in that area. He is merely one mode of communication for the scientific community. More disappointingly, however, are the physicists he references who are doing a great disservice to their respective fields by discrediting the foundation upon which their careers are based.
Unfortunately, ignorance is spread by those that shout the loudest and physics, or science in general, does not have an efficient way to communicate its ideas and findings in a relatable way to those outside the scientific community. This leads to uninformed or malignant opinions which ultimately further ostracize the sciences from the general public, fueling articles such as this. All I can say is that it is a sad state of affairs when the image of a group is dictated by the interpretation of a person who has no right to stand as its voice.
Mr. Appleyard, you and your ilk are a blight on the academic community and cause more issues than you solve. Please temper your words and keep in mind that just because you may not understand the “beautiful mathematics” that we base our research, livelihoods, and very beings on does not imply they are flawed.
8 May 2015 at 6:35 pm
Kacey Russell–your professor was biased and naive. It’s not the “[p]oliticians and journalists” that “make these goals near impossible,” rather it’s the scientist’s desire that his/her work be deemd special and unique in its importance vis-a-vis the work of other professions, along with the desire for fame and fortune (attracting research dollars, selling books, being featured on television shows) that undermine the credibility of science. The scientist’s a priori claim to be pursuing the only path to true knowledge is not sustainable [note that this claim is not the product of scientific inquiry or empiricism, but rather a philosophical appeal (rationalism) in the form of an inference]. Making this unprovable claim to special access to true knowledge puts modern day scientists in the same league as the seers, druids, sophists et al who came before them. Trying to spin one’s unique brand of inference into the undeniable truth is fanaticism and demonstrates an inability to understand the limits of scientific inquiry. Scient does wonders in the way it observes and describes patterns in the natural world and then harnesses those patterns and descriptions to build technologies and solutions to man’s problems. I will never understand why this is not enough to satisfy the scientist’s human need for recognition and status. The silly claim to having access to every possible cause and to be “explaining” WHY one event follows another, is ridculous. Science describes and predicts, it does not explain the ultimate reason why particles behave a certain way. The tired refrain, “because the laws of physics require it” is not more empirically or rationally sound than other gap-filling appeals to theistic or deistic gods, flying spaghetti monsters, or other alien forms of intelligence.
18 May 2015 at 2:06 pm
The use of Galois field theory and Number Theory in the development of Coding theory and Cryptography, and subsequent use of these theories in sending messages undistorted through our cell-phones is an example of using Mathematics wisely. There are other examples of using Mathematics wisely, for example , use of Differential geometry in the proof of Positivity of mass problem in the General Theory of Relativity, or using the theory of Sobolev spaces and Partial differential equations in proving existence, uniqueness and stability theorems in the theory of fluid dynamics, and also using the theory of Hilbert spaces and Representation Theory in Quantum Mechanics, and so on. It is not the fault of Mathematical theories that we can not use them wisely to describe what we want. It is lack of proper direction of our thinking that we are unable to formulate theory of Quantum gravity or even Theory of Turbulence in Fluid dynamics. The history of Science shows that Either a Mathematical theory was available whenever it was required, or new mathematical theory was found and then used. Perhaps second thing might be true for Quantum gravity.
29 June 2015 at 5:47 pm
Curiously the author never states the line of reasoning that forms the foundation of smolin’s case, on which everything else – which mostly is secondary and/or little more than statements of personal preference – constructs as rigorous.
It ain’t what he thinks of mathematics, that’s incidental. Time is instrumental, the singular universe is consequential. But how much real knowledge, of mathematics and its part, of the nature of the universe, or the nature of time, and the matter of how the absolute, fundamental, character of time sits with a Pure Relativistic view of nature. Regardless, there is nothing added in the course of these envisionings.
Don’t get me wrong, I am behind Smolin – he’s a visionary – because he finds a simple truth, that has to be true, or everything is lost anyway. From that, the ideas construct.
With apologies, if the author will allow it, the undergrad essay treatment for him; he can brush up what smolin’s argument is during the tea-breaks on the climate science remedials. All just tongue in cheek. Lurve the piece…..Lubos Motl would be sent all a blather by on the one hand healthy red blooded no-pinko commie nonsense climate denialism (he like this very much), but then the ciggie smoking relaxed pillow talk (there’s no link between lung cancer and smoking), turns to string theory. Oh my you so need to run run run for for life!
15 September 2015 at 3:07 pm
“But it is a story that many now believe is pointless, wrong and riddled with wishful thinking and superstition”.
You are exactly correct. Computers cannot know any thing about humans, because humans created the computers. Similarly humans cannot know anything about nature because nature created humans. To learn about nature you must observe nature, just like Galileo did.
You cannot do some mathematics in our home or office, or do some experiments in our labs, to find anything about nature, just like computers or robots. We must learn to observe nature.
Newton’s first law says – objects move on a straight line with constant velocity – is completely wrong. We have never seen such objects on earth or in deep space. Newton’s theories are not result of observation of nature.
Same is true for Uncertainty Principle (UP) of Quantum Mechanics (QM). No engineering experiments can verify any theory, because theories have assumptions. Assumptions can never happen in nature and therefore cannot be tested also.
Thus all of math and physics are all wrong. Take a look at many chapters in the blog site at https://theoryofsouls.wordpress.com/