Wired has reprinted an interview of Simons Science News with David Gross:
He mentioned that he was attracted to physics as a kid, partly by Einstein's and Infeld's book when he was 13. He gives some clues to the interviewer about the meaning of quantum mechanics, fields, quantum fields, asymptotic freedom, and so on.
His adviser Geoffrey Chew has ordered Gross to spark a new revolution by showing that quantum field theory is fundamentally wrong and one needs some revolutionary self-determining theory based on no special "elementary" particles, one satisfying the bootstrap paradigm. Instead, Gross ended up showing that quantum field theory works very well. Thank you.
The younger big shots understood his or their discoveries quickly; the old chaps didn't know quantum field theory well enough so they needed some easily understandable experiments to grasp the idea of the seemingly "unphysical" quarks.
At any rate, this story about an old revolutionary who hires a young gun but the young gun ends up being conservative is presented as something that is rather standard in science. Heisenberg, Dirac, and Bohr were already old chaps who were expecting a new revolution but the Standard Model that ultimately explained the data did nothing of the sort. Instead, it provided us with a conservative accurate reductionist theory based on the well-established concepts and postulates that have passed the tests of time.
You may see that the usual stereotype that the young people are rebels and old people are conservatives doesn't always work in physics – its converse arguably works more often.
Gross interprets string theory as a part and parcel of quantum field theory and in his conventions, it's therefore another continuation of this evolutionary process, not a revolution. In later paragraphs, he makes it clear, however, that the whole portion of quantum field theory that wants to describe quantum gravity well does need string theory and not just the "old things" about quantum field theory.
He says that the landscape of googol-to-the-fifth vacua makes no sense to him. Although I agree with most things he says about the multiverse story, he seems a bit irrational to me when he assaults the very *landscape*. The landscape is just the set of solutions and it is as large as Nature and mathematics decide, not caring whether or not the set and its size "makes sense" to a Gross.
Laymen misinterpret any uncertainty as a "wild guess". In science, uncertainty may be put under control and its existence is actually essential for a proper scientific understanding of anything. In the absence of experiments directly settling questions, we must rely on other scientific methods and we may arguably get very far with them. Philosophy isn't one of them; if a philosopher can offer musings that contribute to physics, he or she is actually doing physics.
The interview ends by not so controversial statements that science describes objective laws and patterns because even the human mind is a physical object. Maybe the author of the question wanted Gross to talk about the interpretations of quantum mechanics but he didn't understand it that way.
Nobel Laureate Says Physics Is in Need of a RevolutionWell, I don't think that the title accurately summarizes what Gross said.
He mentioned that he was attracted to physics as a kid, partly by Einstein's and Infeld's book when he was 13. He gives some clues to the interviewer about the meaning of quantum mechanics, fields, quantum fields, asymptotic freedom, and so on.
His adviser Geoffrey Chew has ordered Gross to spark a new revolution by showing that quantum field theory is fundamentally wrong and one needs some revolutionary self-determining theory based on no special "elementary" particles, one satisfying the bootstrap paradigm. Instead, Gross ended up showing that quantum field theory works very well. Thank you.
The younger big shots understood his or their discoveries quickly; the old chaps didn't know quantum field theory well enough so they needed some easily understandable experiments to grasp the idea of the seemingly "unphysical" quarks.
At any rate, this story about an old revolutionary who hires a young gun but the young gun ends up being conservative is presented as something that is rather standard in science. Heisenberg, Dirac, and Bohr were already old chaps who were expecting a new revolution but the Standard Model that ultimately explained the data did nothing of the sort. Instead, it provided us with a conservative accurate reductionist theory based on the well-established concepts and postulates that have passed the tests of time.
You may see that the usual stereotype that the young people are rebels and old people are conservatives doesn't always work in physics – its converse arguably works more often.
Gross interprets string theory as a part and parcel of quantum field theory and in his conventions, it's therefore another continuation of this evolutionary process, not a revolution. In later paragraphs, he makes it clear, however, that the whole portion of quantum field theory that wants to describe quantum gravity well does need string theory and not just the "old things" about quantum field theory.
He says that the landscape of googol-to-the-fifth vacua makes no sense to him. Although I agree with most things he says about the multiverse story, he seems a bit irrational to me when he assaults the very *landscape*. The landscape is just the set of solutions and it is as large as Nature and mathematics decide, not caring whether or not the set and its size "makes sense" to a Gross.
Laymen misinterpret any uncertainty as a "wild guess". In science, uncertainty may be put under control and its existence is actually essential for a proper scientific understanding of anything. In the absence of experiments directly settling questions, we must rely on other scientific methods and we may arguably get very far with them. Philosophy isn't one of them; if a philosopher can offer musings that contribute to physics, he or she is actually doing physics.
The interview ends by not so controversial statements that science describes objective laws and patterns because even the human mind is a physical object. Maybe the author of the question wanted Gross to talk about the interpretations of quantum mechanics but he didn't understand it that way.
David Gross on youth, revolutions, conservatives, QM, QFT, QCD, ST, multiverse etc.
![David Gross on youth, revolutions, conservatives, QM, QFT, QCD, ST, multiverse etc.]()
Reviewed by DAL
on
June 04, 2013
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