Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth

by Jim Baggott

Overview

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, superstrings, the multiverse, the holographic principle, or the anthropic cosmological principle. These theories are not only untrue, it is not even science. It is 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605985749
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	07/15/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jim Baggott is an award-winning science writer. A former academic chemist, he maintains a broad interest in science, philosophy, and history, and writes on these subjects for New Scientist and other journals. His books have been widely acclaimed and include A Beginner's Guide to Reality (Pegasus, 2006), The First War of Physics (Pegasus, 2010), The Meaning of Quantum Physics (Oxford, 1992), and Beyond Measure Modern Physics, Philosophy, and the Meaning of Quantum Theory (Oxford, 2004). He lives in England.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 The Supreme Task Reality, Truth and the Scientific Method 1

Part I The Authorized Version 25

2 White Ambassadors of Morning Light, Quantum Theory and the Nature of Reality 27

3 The Construction of Mass Matter, Force and the Standard Model of Particle Physics 54

4 Beautiful Beyond Comparison Space, Time and the Special and General Theories of Relativity 81

5 The (Mostly) Missing Universe The Universe According to the Standard Model of Big Bang Cosmology 102

6 What's Wrong with this Picture? Why the Authorized Version of Reality Can't be Right 129

Part II The Grand Delusion 153

7 Thy Fearful Symmetry Beyond the Standard Model: Supersymmetry and Grand Unification 155

8 In the Cemetery of Disappointed Hopes Superstrings, M-theory and the Search for the Theory of Everything 182

9 Gardeners of the Cosmic Landscape Many Worlds and the Multiverse 208

10 Source Code of the Cosmos Quantum Information, Black Holes and the Holographic Principle 234

11 Ego Sum Ergo Est I Am Therefore It Is: the Anthropic Cosmological Principle 261

12 Just Six Questions Defining the Destination at the End of a Hopeful Journey 284

Endnotes 301

Bibliography 313

Index 319

Interviews

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? These 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...

Editorial Reviews

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.

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 Charybdis of popular nonsense.

Intellectually gratifying.

From the Publisher

Intellectually gratifying.

The Economist

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

Science writer Baggott (Higgs: The Invention and Discovery of the God Particle, 2012, etc.) argues that many of the more esoteric theories that have captured scientific and public attention no longer abide by the rules of scientific exploration. From supersymmetry to the holographic principle to the multiverse, the author dismantles the notion that a theory can be properly scientific without any observational or experimental evidence, calling such ideas "fairy-tale physics" loaded with "metaphysical baggage." Since some of these popular theories--for example, the idea that ours is one of an infinite number of parallel universes--hold very little or even no potential to ever be verified experimentally, Baggott criticizes the ways in which physicists produce content aimed at a general audience that tends to take such information at face value. A keener skepticism, he argues, is necessary in order to protect the definition of a traditional scientific method and retain space between theories supported by experimental evidence and theories that remain mere possibilities. Otherwise, the very notion of "reality" becomes muddled in the race to justify physics that remain on the fringe of fact. Baggott deftly guides readers through many of the most cutting-edge and bizarre-seeming theories that have found a strong following by leaders in the field, and he examines how each defies principles of testability, fact and even reality. The result is a book that is brave in its willingness to take on these scientific giants and provocative for its compelling, and well-argued, suggestion that modern physics may not be science at all. Baggott pulls no punches in his accusation that modern physics has left the realm of reality and is, instead, its own brand of fiction.

Kirkus Reviews