About this title: When does physics depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble theology? Peter Woit argues that string theory isnt just going in the wrong direction, its not even science. Not Even Wrong shows that what many physicists call superstring theory is not a theory at all. It makes no predictions, not even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish. Peter Woit explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today, offering the other side of the story.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 9-4-06
ISBN-13:9780465092758ISBN:0465092756
Description: FINE. Crisp, clean, unread, and unmarked hardcover with light shelfwear to the dust jacket, and a small publishers mark to one edge. -Very Nice! 1.25 lbs. read more
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Edition: First edition.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780465092758ISBN:0465092756
Description: Fine in fine dust jacket. Fine Hardcover in Fine Jacket. Solid & square w/tight clean text. Glued binding. Paper over boards. 291 p. Audience: General/trade. Mathematics; Non-Fiction; Number Theory; Physical laws; Physics; Quantum theory; Science; String models; Superstring theories; Supersymmetry. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780465092765ISBN:0465092764
Description: Very Good. One corner has been dented, pages are like new. NEVER READ! Book is an overstock and shows minor handling wear. May have marker line (remainder mark) on edge. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 2007-09-03
ISBN-13:9780465092765ISBN:0465092764
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780465092765ISBN:0465092764
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Description: Good. Light shelving wear with minimal damage to cover and bindings. Pages show minor use. Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read. Recycle and Reuse! read more
"The most powerful and convincing criticism of string theory I've ever seen. Not a good introduction to the subject - as an engineer with several pop physics books under my belt, I was dangling by a finger for most of the time I was reading. But it's rewarding and edifying, and provides an answer to the person who reads The Elegant Universe and then talks about it at parties (I admit this with sadness, being the prime example of that flavor of asininity)."
"I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to finish this one. It is too hard. It has been written about as badly as it is possible to write a book like this. Take this as a case in point:
"Mathematicians were much slower to appreciate the Dirac equation and it had little impact on mathematics at the time of its discovery. Unlike the case with the physicists, the equation did not immediately answer any questions that mathematicians had been thinking about. This began to change in the early 1960s, when the British mathematician Michael Atiyah and his American colleague Isadore Singer rediscovered the equation for themselves in their work on the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, one of the most important results of the latter half of the twentieth century."
Ahh, yes, the old Atiyah-Singer index theorem - one of my favourites. No point in saying anything more about something quite so well known as the index theorem.
I was so looking forward to this book because I do think String Theory has a lot to answer for.
The title comes from a favourite saying of Wolfgang Pauli - but Woit even stuffs up this story. My favourite telling comes from In Search of Schrodinger's Cat (at least, I think that is where I read it - it was a long time ago). This is my memory of the story, anyway. Pauli had some sort of illness (Parkinson's? - I honestly can't remember) and it had the unfortunate effect of making his head bob. He would sit listening to lectures by young Physicists and they would think they were making a wonderful impression on the great man as he sat there nodding along with them, all until he would suddenly jump up and say, "Wrong! Utterly false!"
Anyway, that was him on a good day. By far his worst criticism, which has become proverbial, was his saying to someone their theory was "Not even wrong!" That is, what they had said was nothing more than pure, blind speculation that could be neither proven nor disproven. Damning criticism indeed.
And that is what I was expecting this book to show about String Theory - that String Theory makes no predictions about the world that can be proven one way or the other and that therefore it too is not even wrong.
And I bet that is what this book gets around to saying - it is just that I found everything from about page 40 virtually completely incomprehensible. Admittedly, I was reading this one before going to sleep - but I really struggled with it. I've stopped at page 80 - not actually with blood coming out of my eyes, but close enough not want to go on. Roger Penrose calls it 'Compulsive reading' - but I suspect Roger may have less trouble with what I found were far too vague introductions to concepts like quantum theory. I think Roger may have been able to fill in the gaps more than I was able to do. Woit provides a very 'geometric' view of quantum theory, one I've never heard of before, and I admit it left me completely lost.
I was really looking forward to this one and I feel very let down by it. This might be a much better book than I found it to be - but I would suggest you will need quite a bit more physics to understand it than should be expected from the 'general' reader."
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