vasha's review against another edition
5.0
I've read this twice, and found it interesting and valuable. Okay, so the SSC is dead, but the real meat of this book is Weinberg's discussions of how physicists go about making theories. He also has a very clear way of laying out philosophical discussions.
thepavand's review
4.0
This book documents the argument made by Steven Weinberg for continuing to fund the Super-conducting Super Collider in 1993; an argument that was doomed to failure. The collider was going to achieve energies much larger (approx. 3 times) than LHC, which would have enabled it to discover new particles that were expected to explain the spontaneous symmetry breaking between electric and weak forces. (The equations governing electric and weak forces are symmetric with respect to these fields, but the solutions allow for asymmetry between them. This was supposed to happen through a new force-carrying particle that would be too massive to have been observed in earlier experiments.) Of course, the Higgs particle was discovered two decades later in the LHC, but the higher energies achievable at SSC were expected to bring to light new phenomena that can never be observed in LHC.
Not very long after this book was published the project was canceled by the American Congress, knowing which gives a very ayyo paapam feel while reading Weinberg's earnest, desperate arguments. Weinberg also gives the reason for this desperation. High Energy Physics was on the brink of a veritable stagnation then, having far surpassed the realm of experiments. We needed more ambitious experiments that were far grander in scale to give the necessary impetus to theoretical research; to give direction to problems unresolvable without experimental guidance. Well that all is over now. HEP has been stagnant for a long time. People are losing all faith and interest in string theory, that was expected by 90s optimists to reach high school textbooks.
The book is not about SSC though. Along the way, Weinberg describes the search for by and attitudes of prominent scientists, including himself, and philosophers about a final theory of everything since the pre-Socratic period, when one particular school of Greek philosophers posited that everything is made up of air. Later on people did not take the idea seriously, until the beginning of the 20th century when the atom was discovered. What is meant by a final theory? If it explains everything, does that mean we do not need any other field of science, like chemistry, biology, psychology, economics? If it doesn’t, what is the use of such a theory? Is a final theory even possible- what if the search for a final theory is just a series of ‘why’s and the universe is all like fuck you? How do you go about constructing a final theory- do you only constitute it with observables, (like the positivist structure incorporated by Heisenberg in Quantum Mechanics, and Einstein in the Special theory of Relativity?) How would a final theory look like? (Answer: “beauty”ful. Google Emmy Noether and symmetries in physics.) Isn’t such a final theory incompatible with the philosophical paradigm shifts of the twentieth century? Is there a place for God in the Final theory?
If you’re interested in any of the questions listed above, you should read the book, cos Weinberg is remarkably comfortable with all these topics, and gives satisfactory and illuminating answers to almost all of them. (Well, one of them is not like the others. The discussion on God feels out of place. Unnecessary. The Higgs boson has nothing to do with God. Weinberg shouldn’t have had to explain it.) The chapter on philosophy reserves some generous thrashings to various philosophies that stood against science at various times. Weinberg feels they mostly did more harm than they did good. He also warns about brilliant young men who were seduced by philosophy in the past and wasted their potential. He himself had great fascination for philosophy as an undergrad, but had abandoned it in favour of science, seeing how much more satisfying and successful science is. Now, I am more into philosophy than the average person/ physics student, but Weinberg makes a persuasive argument. I will reserve my judgement.
Not very long after this book was published the project was canceled by the American Congress, knowing which gives a very ayyo paapam feel while reading Weinberg's earnest, desperate arguments. Weinberg also gives the reason for this desperation. High Energy Physics was on the brink of a veritable stagnation then, having far surpassed the realm of experiments. We needed more ambitious experiments that were far grander in scale to give the necessary impetus to theoretical research; to give direction to problems unresolvable without experimental guidance. Well that all is over now. HEP has been stagnant for a long time. People are losing all faith and interest in string theory, that was expected by 90s optimists to reach high school textbooks.
The book is not about SSC though. Along the way, Weinberg describes the search for by and attitudes of prominent scientists, including himself, and philosophers about a final theory of everything since the pre-Socratic period, when one particular school of Greek philosophers posited that everything is made up of air. Later on people did not take the idea seriously, until the beginning of the 20th century when the atom was discovered. What is meant by a final theory? If it explains everything, does that mean we do not need any other field of science, like chemistry, biology, psychology, economics? If it doesn’t, what is the use of such a theory? Is a final theory even possible- what if the search for a final theory is just a series of ‘why’s and the universe is all like fuck you? How do you go about constructing a final theory- do you only constitute it with observables, (like the positivist structure incorporated by Heisenberg in Quantum Mechanics, and Einstein in the Special theory of Relativity?) How would a final theory look like? (Answer: “beauty”ful. Google Emmy Noether and symmetries in physics.) Isn’t such a final theory incompatible with the philosophical paradigm shifts of the twentieth century? Is there a place for God in the Final theory?
If you’re interested in any of the questions listed above, you should read the book, cos Weinberg is remarkably comfortable with all these topics, and gives satisfactory and illuminating answers to almost all of them. (Well, one of them is not like the others. The discussion on God feels out of place. Unnecessary. The Higgs boson has nothing to do with God. Weinberg shouldn’t have had to explain it.) The chapter on philosophy reserves some generous thrashings to various philosophies that stood against science at various times. Weinberg feels they mostly did more harm than they did good. He also warns about brilliant young men who were seduced by philosophy in the past and wasted their potential. He himself had great fascination for philosophy as an undergrad, but had abandoned it in favour of science, seeing how much more satisfying and successful science is. Now, I am more into philosophy than the average person/ physics student, but Weinberg makes a persuasive argument. I will reserve my judgement.
More...