We Also Review Books

Just so you don't think it's all TV, all the time.

So I've been re-reading Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe", which I first read in high-school. I vaguely remembered liking it a lot back then, and was curious if it would still impress me.

The book was a triumphialist spin through superstring theory, which is still on pretty iffy ground ten years later. Making no experimentally-verifiable predictions will do that to you in a hard science like physics, although it doesn't seem to be such a shortcoming in the social "sciences". For the true-believers the proof is always right around the corner, so I didn't expect (nor find) any mea culpa admissions of over-zealousness in the updated 2003 intro. I think the publisheer would have done well to stick something in, though, to give it a little more context/perspective.

Since I had also recently read through Einstein's own popularization of his theories of relativity (the 2005 translation published by Pi Press), I was subconsciously contrasting it with Greene's presentation of relativity, which he included as a prelude to the attempt at reconciling it with quantum mechanics. Sadly, the two were like night and day.

Einstein spelled out the fundamental problems which lead him to his theory through abstract but tangible thought experiments (gedankenexperiment, IIRC), and then stepped through the entire chain of reasoning, proving with almost mathematical clarity exactly why his theory is necessary and inescapable. The experimental proof was just icing on the cake, and Einstein himself was convinced he was right before Eddington even set off to observe the eclipse.

By contrast, Greene's presentation consisted of little more than making seemingly outrageous claims (at least, outrageous when viewed from the common-sense perspective of the layman), and then dogmatically insisting that the claims had to be true because the experiments proved it. Now, I'm all for experimental empiricism, but that just won't work here. There's no way you can explain the experiments in sufficient depth here, with all the attendant mathematics, and Greene in fact did not. Instead it looks like hand-waving: "Trust me, I'm a scientist! Don't look behind the curtain!"

It's especially tragic because relativity in particular doesn't need it - just look at how Einstein himself did it. The case can be made that the experiment have to be the centerpiece for quantum mechanics, and I almost suspect that he gave them a similar presentation so the latter wouldn't look deficient by comparison.

Conclusion: Not as good as I remember it. Superstring section & quantum presentation is decent, take a pass on relativity, but too much boosterism for strings. Now I'm even wondering if it was a different book that I remember liking so much in high school. Well, there's always time to read some more :)