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The book is an engagingly written and relatively accessible account of an acerbic debate at the heart of contemporary theoretical high-energy physics. One of the premier pursuits in this discipline, that engages some of its best minds, is the study and development of string theory, a fundamental “proposal” (to use a characterisation that acknowledges Smolin’s scepticism) for the grand unification of all the known fundamental forces in Nature. But, yet, in the eyes of a critical minority of theoretical physicists, the theory is a non-starter, a sign of a section of contemporary physics having lost its way forward completely. This is a problem, complains Smolin, a leading member of this sceptical fraternity that is compounded by the reality of the institutional character of science, particularly in funding, that puts all its eggs in one basket, ignoring the need for competing lines of enquiry that would stimulate genuine intellectual competition.

Smolin begins with an eminently readable account of some of the fundamental problems that contemporary high-energy physics and cosmology seek to solve. Among the critical problems here is the nature of the gravitational force. Even the lay reader, who keeps up with popular science writing, would be aware that despite the success of Einstein’s theory of gravitation, it has proven notoriously difficult to reconcile this theory with the quantum nature of the phenomena of the micro-world. In trying to understand extreme environments, such as those that must be present in the vicinity of black holes, or close to the very origin of the Big Bang, resolving this question is critical. But even without such specific motivations, it has long been recognised that the mismatch between the theory of gravitation and quantum mechanics is a major, embarrassing flaw in the imposing edifice of the so-called “standard” model of the fundamental forces of Nature. In the reckoning of some theorists it may even be that there is equally something missing from our understanding of quantum mechanics itself.

Superimposed on this issue, has been the dream of understanding gravitation in the quantum domain, in one fell swoop as it were, in a unified framework from which emerge all the known forces of Nature. String theory is the logical culmination of decades of effort in this direction, efforts that in their original rudimentary form began with Einstein himself. The meat in the book really is a popular account of this theory, the origin of its claims to being the frontrunner among various options in going beyond Einstein’s theory, and a critical account of the weaknesses of what its more enthusiastic advocates have termed “the string revolution”. He focuses on the outstanding weakness of string theory, that it has turned up virtually nothing by way of experimental predictions that could be tested in the real world. Even worse, it seems to be drifting away from being able to generate such predictions, even as it chalks up numerous theoretical and mathematical successes in model problems that keep high the enthusiasm of its advocates.

If this part of the argument is well executed, the effort begins to flag in the account of the alternatives to string theory. But the book certainly provides an overview of the main alternatives, and even a glimpse of a few far-out ideas. But the dramatic tone in which some of these developments are described do seem somewhat odd considering how little impact they have had on the mainstream of the discipline.

He is certainly objective enough to acknowledge this, even if he, as the critic arguing the minority case, spends little time explaining the substance of the mainstream critique of these alternatives. But the interesting twist is that Smolin inclines in the main to a sociological explanation of why these alternatives receive such little airtime inside the discipline.

One of the striking features of this last third of the book, devoted mainly to this explanation, is his oddly subjective view of how science really works in the final analysis. “Science has succeeded,” says Smolin “because scientists comprise a community that is defined and maintained by an adherence to a shared ethic.”

The key obstacle to theoretical progress, in his view, is the attitude of the string theory community, who has, in his opinion, forsaken the scientific ethic of rational decision making based on a careful reading of the available evidence. They have instead, he charges, become a monolithic community that is aggressively intolerant of dissent, whether based on evidence or on the sheer need for competing lines of enquiry to ensure a healthy plurality of theoretical approaches.

Smolin, surprisingly for a physicist, ignores the possibility that both the practitioners and the critics of string theory are perhaps victims of the enormous success of the “standard model” of theoretical high-energy physics outside the realm that involves the gravitational force in a fundamental way. Extracting fresh clues from Nature has become a matter of ‘mega-science’, involving difficult and expensive efforts stretched over long periods of time. Progress in the meanwhile has to rest on purely theoretical means and hence perhaps the dubious argument that sees scientific success or failure as the consequence of the degree of adherence to the ethical ideals of the scientific community.

His diagnosis of the ills of contemporary high-energy physics certainly appears a trifle exaggerated, reflected in the book’s title that many physicists in other sub-disciplines would find far too sweeping in tone. But it provides a rare glimpse of the all-too-human side of science, and of the not infrequent despair and heartbreak of the individuals who drive the scientific enterprise forward.

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