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From acclaimed science author Jim Baggot, a pointed critique of modern theoretical physics

In this stunning new volume, Jim Baggott argues that there is no observational or experimental evidence for many of the ideas of modern theoretical physics: super-symmetric particles, super strings, the multiverse, the holographic principle, or the anthropic cosmological principle. These theories are not only untrue; they are not even science. They are fairy-tale physics: fantastical, bizarre and often outrageous, perhaps even confidence-trickery. This book provides a much-needed antidote. Informed, comprehensive, and balanced, it offers lay readers the latest ideas about the nature of physical reality while clearly distinguishing between fact and fantasy. With its engaging portraits of many central figures of modern physics, including Paul Davies, John Barrow, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, and Leonard Susskind, it promises to be essential reading for all readers interested in what we know and don’t know about the nature of the universe and reality itself.

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From acclaimed science author Jim Baggot, a pointed critique of modern theoretical physics

Editorial Reviews

Review

“From superstrings and black holes to dark matter and multiverses, modern theoretical physics revels in the bizarre. Now it’s wandered into the realm of “fairy-tale,” says science writer and former “practicing” physicist Baggott (A Beginners Guide to Reality). Quantum theory led scientists to create a Standard Model of physics in the mid-20th century, but that model is really an amalgam of distinct individual quantum theories necessary to describe a diverse array of forces and particles. Meanwhile, astronomical observations have revealed that 90% of our universe is made of something we can’t see (dark matter); some mysterious “dark energy” is pushing all of it apart at an accelerating rate, and physicists are gambling on a “supersymmetry” theory in hopes that it could be the holy grail, a Grand Unified Field Theory that might lend coherence to the Standard Model while explaining some of the phenomena the latter fails to account for—despite the fact, Baggott says, that for “every standard model problem it resolves, another problem arises that needs a fix.” In consistently accessible and intelligent prose, Baggott sympathetically captures the frustrations of physicists while laying out a provocative—and very convincing—plea for a reality check in a field that he feels is now too “meta” for its own good.” (Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW)

“Baggott has done something that I would have thought impossible in a popular book. He navigates successfully between the Scylla of mathematical rigor and the Charybd is of popular nonsense.” (The Wall Street Journal)

“The basic history behind the quantum revolution is well known, but no one has ever told it in such a compellingly human and thematically seamless way.” (Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW)

“Intellectually gratifying.” (The Economist)

From the Author

Modern physicists have spent decades struggling to explain the universe with more and more baroque theories. They’re creative and complex—and as Jim Baggott points out in review - Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth, largely unsupported by experimental evidence. Shining a spotlight on both fact and fancy, Baggott draws the line between valid science and “fairy tale” physics.

Q: Where did modern physics “go wrong”?

A: Theoretical physicists were faced with a choice. Either they could sit and wait for new data that might help guide them toward solutions, or they could build new theoretical structures without waiting for data. Of course, they couldn’t wait. The end result is the creation of theoretical structures with great logical and mathematical appeal, but with no real empirical foundations—in other words, metaphysics.

Q: Is there something endemic to the field that invites this kind of abstraction?

A: Not so much with the field of physics itself, but rather with aspects of physics that touch on the “big questions” of reality and human existence. Human beings have always desired to tell each other creation stories, and contemporary theoretical physicists are no different. It’s really hard to resist.

Q: You describe the Standard Model of particle physics as being riddled with problems. Has the recent discovery of the Higgs boson made things better or worse?

A: It really depends on what you were hoping for. All the signs indicate that the particle discovered [at CERN] last July is the bog-standard Higgs boson. This is a triumph for the Standard Model, but it doesn’t really move us forward. There are no real big surprises here, no new data to point toward resolving some of the Standard Model’s thornier problems. I think it’s fair to say that most high-energy physicists hoped for something more. But it seems we’re not going to get it.

Q: Is any part of modern theoretical physics salvageable?

A: Funnily enough, I don’t advocate any kind of major change of direction. I just want us all to acknowledge the difference between empirically based scientific theories and metaphysics, or pseudo-science. I would question whether we should be throwing all our eggs in the string theory/multiverse/cosmic landscape basket. Perhaps it’s time to consider other ways we might address the problems with the “authorized version” of reality, wherein all the available observational and experimental data are essentially secondary to the prevailing theoretical structures. These other ways would suffer from a lack of empirical foundations just the way string theory does, but there’s a saying that when you find yourself in a deep hole, maybe it’s time to stop digging...

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Product Details

File Size: 1041 KB
Print Length: 353 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1780334923
Publisher: Pegasus Books (August 6, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00CY2RB04
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray: Enabled

Lending: Enabled
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,673 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #11 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics
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35 of 45 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Overview of current issues in Physics, with a twist June 3, 2013

By Henri C. Ransford

Format:Kindle Edition

This book is really an overview of the current themes and questions of Physics, with a twist. The overview makes up about 80% of the content, and the twist the rest.

As an overview of where Physics is at, it's outstanding and really quite complete. It effectively covers all of the important themes in Physics today.

The twist is a critique of what the author calls 'fairy tale physics' - the speculations straddling the outer edges of the envelope, as it were. As such, it directly echoes the wonderful collection of papers published by Dieter Zeh last year (mostly but not exclusively in German), under the title: 'Physik ohne Realität - Tiefsinn oder Wahnsinn?' (roughly, Physics Without Reality: Profundity or Folly? ) Whereas Dieter Zeh presented a series of compelling papers, Jim Baggott's critique seems weaker, on a number of grounds:

First, it makes a bit of a mountain out of speculations which really are molehills. Yes, some speculations in modern physics are idle and out of left field - but so what.

Second, it overlooks a fundamental driver of progress: the ability, even the permission, to make mistakes. Let us not forget that e.g. hard-science astronomy was born of .... nonsensical astrology, and panning astrology then would have delayed the onset of astronomy. Closer to modern times, yes indeed sting theory has involved a lot of untestable, fanciful theorizing. But in the process of doing so, it has achieved much good. It has considerably enhanced the mathematical abilities and conversance of a generation of physicists. It has also helped solve a few conundrums, such as the so-called 'black hole information paradox'.

There is value in pushing the envelope beyond visible borders, in being able to imagine things however out-of-left-field: imposing beforehand constraints on the ambit of thinking most often entails bad side effects, such as constraining thought. It's true in art, in music, in movie-making, and in Physics. That's e.g. why Stanley Fish's essay 'There Is No Such Thing as Free Speech' was so roundly panned. That's why David Kaiser could write of the hippies having saved Physics, and was able to demonstrate it materially - with real world, dollars and cents applications of the hippies' thoughts.

Over time, unworthy speculations always end up disappearing without a trace, but the little good they somehow contributed to bring about, be it in a nonlinear way, remains. Wasn't it Hewlett Packard Company who, for this very reason, introduced a management principle in the 80s that went : 'Make sure that you generate a sufficient number of mistakes'?

And last but not least .... it seems to me that Jim Baggott may be barking up the wrong tree.
In a world sorely wracked by the very material effects of unproven and often very fanciful theologies, what possible harm is there in speculating at the far edges of physics? There certainly is such a thing as overly reductionist scientists.

In our society where over 30 % of the population aver, according to polls, that they have had at least one 'transcendent spiritual experience' in their lives, isn't on the contrary the surer way to turn people away from science to peremptorily and arrogantly dismiss and deny these personal experiences from the vantage point of science's high stool? Who are the Mary C. Neals of the world going to rather want to believe - themselves, or Daniel Dennett on TV or third party know-it-alls?

Most of the sins of the interpretation of physics cited by Jim Baggott are nowhere near the Eben Alexander level of intensity. Of course, there are the occasional howlers, which indeed threaten to discredit science: as a case in point, the ridiculous calculation, taken seriously in some quarters, that the metaverse contains not only an exact copy of yourself ten to the power ten to the power 29 meters away, but also an infinity of further such copies farther away. But such howlers are rare, and relatively not so well known. The author says that if we don't curtail science and bring it back to a nonspeculative, pedestrian level where some areas of discussion are no longer allowed, people will turn away from science in droves. Perhaps the opposite is true.

At bottom, only more science can correct science. If a society does not address questions - any questions - through science, then it will address them anyway - through far more questionable avenues. Science should welcome all questions, accept all speculations, and ultimately let some fail and some thrive in the efficient marketplace of ideas. Read more ›

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy and science August 10, 2013

By Advisor

Format:Hardcover

The ultimate purpose of this book is to suggest that modern physics and cosmology is tending to forget its responsibilities and become an academic exercise. To make this point Baggott presents a framework of six principles describing how science operates, and then proceeds to describe in detail (but without mathematics) how modern developments fit into this framework. Each chapter begins with a pithy and pertinent quote from Einstein that makes its point. This presentation is interesting, engaging, and contains anecdotes and historical facts I was interested to learn. This is Part 1 of the book. Part 2 of the book is a careful look at very recent science, and has the objective of persuading the reader that not all the lessons of of Part 1 and not all the six principles of Part 1 are being followed by those at the forefront of string theory and multiverses.

I'd say the author is persuasive. His concern is that science is wandering off into what amounts to pure mathematics at best and proselytizing at worst, rather than experimental science, and that this could derail the very successful paradigm of Part 1. The argument is substantial and thoughtful.

Although I won't say that I have a strong philosophical background, and despite references by the author to Plato and Hume and Bishop Berkeley, I am inclined to say that the discussion of what is going wrong would benefit from a dose of philosophy that has pinpointed the issues that concern the author in more abstract terms. A well-trodden area of philosophy that is only touched upon here is Principle 2: ''The fact principle; Facts are not theory-neutral. Observation is not possible without reference to a theory''.

I'd recommend this book to readers who are not up to date on the science and who would like to see an attempt to fit it all into a broad framework that sets up an authoritative criticism of these activities. This book is not intended as the last word, but it serves as an excellent beginning.

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A lost opportunity August 10, 2013

By antonio ruiz de elvira

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

A lost opportunity to signal the flaws of modern physics. Baggot does well when he point to the many idiocies and witching ideas that fill up the theoretical physics discourse nowadays, but he is too condescending with the idiocies, as when he accepts the discussion of reality, and does not strongly rejects the ''need for other ways of thinking'' of physicists like Susskind or Greene, ''other ways'' meaning everything is O.K. including dragons, centauri or sirens. Our brain has the ability of biulding images of horse with human torsos, but these images are unable to build these creatures to live on. Similarly, we are able to imagine many universes, time when there was no time, theories with 10 to the 10 to the .... power of parameters, and imagining every combination of what we already know. We can imagine food, but with that irreal food we die of hunger. Galileo Galilei gave a recipe to separate imagination from reality, and that recipe is as valid today as then: Test your imaginations in the laboratorium under strictly controlled conditions. If they cannot be validated or if they are falsified, they are wrong, and that is as right for imaginary food as for multiverses. Baggott signal the perils of going on on that direction, but does it in 'correct political way'', when we need a strong rejection of these approaches to science.

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4 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sensible treeatment of a field of science that has lost its footing July 7, 2013

By Tibor R. Machan

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

A welcome change from all the incomprehensible science journalism. I have come not to trust most of it. I suspect they revel in obscurity, one way to lock up the field so ordinary mortals cannot address the issues. This book is kind of in the emperor has no clothes genre.

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