[HN Gopher] The Elegant Universe: 25th Anniversary Edition
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The Elegant Universe: 25th Anniversary Edition
Author : r721
Score : 20 points
Date : 2024-08-21 14:53 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.math.columbia.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.math.columbia.edu)
| cvoss wrote:
| Greene and Woit are colleagues in the same department (Greene is
| in two departments) of the same university. This kind of public
| airing of grievances (at one point Woit calls something Greene
| writes "highly offensive") seems like not the appropriate
| mechanism for hashing out academic disagreements? Unclear to me.
|
| I'm also having a hard time understanding Woit's position given
| that he's a math department guy. Sure, string theory doesn't look
| exciting from an experimentalist's perspective. But from a
| mathematical perspective it is an incredible achievement and
| valuable even if it turns out to not actually describe our
| universe.
| ak_111 wrote:
| You say you haven't understood his position, you mean from
| reading this blog post which isn't supposed to be even an
| overview of his position? Instead he has written an entire book
| elaborating on his view, which seems to be a well-regarded text
| in the very small niche of anti-string theory popular books.
|
| Have you read his book? I think it is a perfectly valid and
| appropriate mechanism for hashing out academic disagreement and
| further should be _welcomed_ by anyone who appreciates string
| theory. I personally haven 't read his book but will be very
| surprised if he doesn't address your point that String theory
| makes good mathematics. I also personally think a simple answer
| for that objection would be that this is a perfectly valid
| reason to research it provided you are honest that is the only
| demonstrable benefit for it so far (which will then have
| implications on which funding pots you can propose to).
|
| String theory advocates (particularly the extreme ones, such as
| Greene) that Woit targets seem to imply that the benefit of
| string theory to mankind has far exceeded other pure
| mathematics branches' contribution (for example category
| theory), particularly that it helped us figure out the
| unification of all known laws of physics when there are
| practically zero evidence that it managed that.
| photon_lines wrote:
| I 100% agree with you - I don't buy anything about string
| theory and I believe it has almost nothing to do with the state
| of reality, but the attempt itself is honorable and the
| mathematics behind it is beautiful and can be used to advance
| our understanding of the universe. If it also inspires others
| to get into physics and discover new things about reality -
| it's an overall win for humanity so kudos to any string
| theorists out there :)
| johnkpaul wrote:
| I've found this explainer by Angela Collier super helpful in
| understanding the current state of string theory.
|
| https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=wjHwG0p3J4HWRKs7
|
| I was a gigantic pop science fan and read The Elegant Universe
| when I was approximately 13 and am excited it's still being read
| even if it's not necessarily true about our universe. It's got
| the inspiration and excitement part that's all I really needed as
| a kid.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't pretend to understand modern physics. However, I _did_
| buy "The Elegant Universe" and got most of the way through it,
| until I got tired of the hype: especially, phrases like "It turns
| out that ..." when _nothing_ has "turned out."
|
| If you can't test it, it's not science. If it's just "beautiful
| mathematics" it should be in the Math Department. I don't find
| anything offensive about Woit's article. Disagreement is part of
| what everyone signed up for.
| photon_lines wrote:
| The Fabric of the Cosmos is far far better in my opinion and
| doesn't stick to theories - he attempts to explain concepts in
| an intuitive manner and it's an amazing exposition into
| physics.
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(page generated 2024-08-24 23:00 UTC)