The Trouble With Physics

Some time ago, I read Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics. (New York: Houghton, 2006)

The trouble, as Smolin sees it, is that physics has become too fixated on string theory. Smolin, a physicist who has contributed to string theory himself, is not sure that string theory is wrong, but he is sure that physics isn't telling us any more about how the universe is made than it did a few decades ago.

The twentieth century was a period when physics produced two important new ways of looking at the universe. These were relativity, which, among other things, led to the use of nuclear energy, and quantum mechanics, which, among other things, led to the development of lasers and semiconductors. Without lasers and semiconductors, computers, as we now use them, would be impossible.

But there have been problems. The main one is that there was no satisfactory way to combine the two theories. String theory is the most common attempt to do so, claiming that "strings" are the fundamental units of matter, and that there are really more than 4 dimensions (3 for space and one for time).

Smolin lists five "Great Problems in Theoretical Physics." (pp. 3-17, chapter 1) They are:
1) combine relativity and gravity into a theory of quantum gravity
2) "resolve the problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics" (p. 8)
3) find out if all the particles and all the forces are the manifestation of a single entity
4) "Explain how the values of the free constants in the standard model of particle physics are chosen in nature." (p. 13)
5) "Explain dark matter and dark energy." (p. 16)

He says that string theory, so far, has not made significant progress in solving these problems. Furthermore, string theory, so far, is not really falsifiable -- it hasn't proposed experiments which could show that it is wrong.

Smolin believes that one of the problems with modern physics is that it is not philosophical enough:

The standard model of particle physics was the triumph of a particular way of doing science that came to dominate physics in the 1940s. This style is pragmatic and hard-nosed and favors virtuosity in calculating over reflection on hard conceptual problems. This is profoundly different from the way that Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and the other early-twentieth-century revolutionaries did science. Their work arose from deep thought on the most basic questions surrounding space, time, and matter, and they saw what they did as part of a broader philosophical tradition, in which they were at home. In the approach to particle physics developed and taught by Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, and others, reflection on foundational problems had no place in research. Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. New York: Houghton, 2006. pp. xxii-xxiii.

Smolin says that this approach enabled great progress to be made, but goes on to say that:
. . . the problems we're up against today cannot be solved by this pragmatic way of doing science. To continue the progress of science, we have to again confront deep questions about space and time, quantum theory, and cosmology. We again need the kinds of people who can invent new solutions to long-standing fundamental problems. Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. New York: Houghton, 2006. p. xxiii.

Another problem, he says, is that the most important physics departments are biased in hiring. They tend to hire only people who are committed to the approaches they are using already, which cuts out new ideas. He also says that they are biased against women and minorities.

God made us stewards of His creation. Part of our stewardship is learning about it -- doing science. We have, we think, made great progress in going from, say, a belief that there were four kinds of substance to the current belief in many chemical elements. Will we ever really understand how things are put together, at their most basic level? I don't know. I think that some of us are supposed to try. See this post for musings about the topics of this paragraph.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional physicist.

Thanks for reading.

Are dinosaurs still alive?

In his book, The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin tells how he met some "members of a Bible college" in an airport, and they told him that they had been to Africa, in part to find evidence that dinosaurs still exist. Smolin asked why they were so hard to find, if they exist, especially since they are large, and some of them seem to have lived in herds. The response was that they hide in caves for most of the day, and are supposed to sort of pull dirt across the entrance from the inside to prevent discovery. (New York: Houghton, pp. 25-26) Smolin was illustrating a similar phenomenon in physics, that is, some claims for a particular theory "are just rationalizations." Smolin had a hard time believing this whole idea, especially the idea about the dinosaurs hiding themselves by pulling dirt across cave entrances. Smolin is a physicist, not a geologist, biologist, or paleontologist. According to him, the Bible college persons brought up the subject that led the conversation to dinosaurs.

What about dinosaurs?

I did a Google search for the words, dinosaurs, caves, Africa, and found, sure enough, several web pages that claim that dinosaurs exist there now. Most or all of these pages are by young-earth creationists, who are either attempting to discredit mainstream science by showing that dinosaurs, which supposedly became extinct more than 60 million years ago, are not extinct at all, arguing that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs on it, or both.

Just because young-earth creationists claim something is true doesn't make it false. Are those who make such claims on to something? My response is that I doubt it, but I'm not absolutely sure.

This page has a section on "dinosaurs in the Bible," which refers to Job 40:15-19, which uses the word "behemoth," in some versions. (See here for the King James translation of this passage. The New King James also uses this word, but there's a note, saying that we don't know what animal is meant.) I have done some serious study on the matter of plants in the Bible, and, for most of the names used, we don't seem to really know what plant was meant. I suspect that the same is true for "behemoth."

I was a little surprised that the page didn't refer to "leviathan," apparently another large animal, which is mentioned in four passages in the King James Bible, namely Job 41, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, and Isaiah 27:1. Leviathan is/was apparently an ocean creature of some kind.

This page cites three articles, from mainstream science journals, indicating that dinosaur soft tissue has been discovered. If so, that is remarkable, if dinosaurs have been extinct for so long. I haven't seen these articles, nor checked to see if they have been supported or discredited by further work.

OK, let's get logical, and examine various possibilities.

Dinosaurs never existed at all.
This is difficult to believe, because of the fossil evidence.

or Dinosaurs existed.

In which case, they became extinct at some time in the past . . .

If that's true, why? There are three possibilities.

1) The earth is very old, and mainstream science, which claims that dinosaurs became extinct a long time ago, is correct.
2) Dinosaurs (and presumably many other forms of prehistoric life) were destroyed before the creation events described in the six days of Genesis 1. This would be consistent with gap theory. It is probably consistent with mainstream science, also.
3) Dinosaurs were rescued from Noah's flood, but have become extinct since, probably because conditions on earth changed*.

or they didn't.

The evidence cited on the web pages proclaiming that they still live is correct, and some dinosaurs still exist. Perhaps the Loch Ness monster exists, and is one.

*Dinosaurs would have taken up a lot of room on the ark, if there were very many species of them, plus the room needed for their food. Genesis 6 says that Noah was to take a male and a female of each animal, and doesn't mention anything about eggs being brought aboard. If somehow the dinosaurs were represented by eggs, rather than young dinosaurs, where did the eggs come from? As the KJV puts it (Genesis 6:20) the animals were to "come unto thee." (to Noah) (I cleaned up some grammar in this paragraph on August 23, 2007. I also mistakenly re-published this as a draft, not a post, after that.)

Thanks for reading.