Jim Baggott has been studying and writing about the history of physics for more than 20 years and has won awards for his scientific research and his science writing. His previous books include A Beginner’s Guide to Reality and Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory, and also Atomic: The First War of Physics and the Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939–1949, and The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments, both of which we’ve previously spoken about on Little Atoms. His latest book is Farewell to Reality: How Fairytale Physics Betrays the Search for Scientific Truth.
Posted in: Little Atoms
David Roemer
June 22, 2013
I suggest that Baggott does not understand what science is because he does not understand metaphysics, which he disparaged a number of times. When animals have nothing to do they go to sleep. Human beings ask questions about what they observe. They want to know the cause of things, the relationship between things, and the unity between things. They ask scientific questions (Why is the sky blue?) and metaphysical questions (What is knowing the sky is blue?). They invent theories and marshall the evidence to decide whether the theory is true or just probable. Metaphysics leads logically to the existence of an infinite being which we call God in the West. Baggott compared deciding whether or not God exists to deciding how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It doesn’t matter about angels and pins. But if God exists, then Baggott may wind up howling in the world to come.
drdaveexeter
June 25, 2013
I don’t share Jim Baggott’s distaste for metaphysics either, but (a) I really enjoyed the show, and (b) I’m sure you know that metaphysicians have come to many different views about the gods of all points of the compass, among which is the view that none of them exist.
David Roemer
June 26, 2013
The most popular metaphysical view of atheists is that free will is an illusion and humans are collections of atoms and molecules. There is very little evidence that free will is an illusion. It is especially clear that we have it when we do something that takes a lot of will power, like sticking to a low calorie diet.
DR. EDWARD SIEGEL
August 14, 2013
Jim Baggott’s book “Farewell to Reality: How Fairytale(THE CORRECT WORD!!!) Physics Betrays the Search for Scientific Truth” hits the nail on the head deadon!!! Bravo!!! (It joins such notables as: Dewedney’s “Yes We Have No Neutrons:, Pigliucci’s “Nonsense on Stilts”, Pielke and Pielke-Jarvis’ “Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future”, Parks’ “Voodoo Science”, Perelman and Correidora’s “How Physics and Astronomy Get Done”, Naser and Gruber’s “Manifold Destiny”,… ad infinitum, ad NAUSEUM!!!).
FOUR “PITHY” CRITIQUES OF OVERBLOWN OVERBYE’S NYTIMES NONSENSE ARTICLE “A Black Hole Mystery Wrapped in a Firewall Paradox”
#1
Jim Baggott’s book “Farewell to Reality: How Fairytale(THE CORRECT WORD!!!) Physics Betrays the Search for Scientific Truth” hits the nail on the head deadon!!! Bravo!!! (It joins such notables as: Dewedney’s “Yes We Have No Neutrons:, Pigliucci’s “Nonsense on Stilts”, Pielke and Pielke-Jarvis’ “Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future”, Parks’ “Voodoo Science”, Perelman and Correidora’s “How Physics and Astronomy Get Done”, Naser and Gruber’s “Manifold Destiny”,… ad infinitum, ad NAUSEUM!!!). Overblown Overbye: typical sycophant media-hype P.R. spin-doctoring show-biz!!! “Full of fury, signifying probably absolutely nothing!!! Lotsa fancy shmancy lingo to snow the rubes, aka “jargonial obfuscation”!!! Quoting Heinrich Heine “Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten”(I don’t know what to believe). Equally believable is classic oriental “the universe is a kumquat, unless it is a persimmon” or “you can never sometimes tell what you least expect most”.
#2
Quoting Timothy Glennon’s Staten Island NY very insightful first comment
“Articles like this, although I got through it all, give me a headache…literally…. trying to follow the flow of words and make sense out of the concepts and conclusions…finally filling me, a well educated, intelligent, and well-read adult, with wonder at how much I don’t know and will never know or understand about something that so clearly has great relevance and meaning to so many people, witness the replies here…it’s very humbling”. Sir, if you claimed to have understood it I’d recommend you to your local nuthouse! Don’t let the “jargonial-obfuscation”, in plain Brooklynese “lotsa fancy shmancy lingo to snow the rubes” snow you too! And there’s many born every minute who believe Overbye who as usual tries to be entertaining rather than factual. The facts are that the words also snow a theoretical physicist like myself too. Admittedly I am not a cosmologist nor quantum field theorest nor general-relativity expert nor… but “trying to follow the flow of words and make sense out of the concepts and conclusions” gives me a headache too!!!
Instead he should amend his comment to “how much THEY ALL don’t know and will never know or understand about something that so clearly has great relevance and meaning to so many people, witness the replies here…it’s very humbling”. It’s all media-hype P.R. “show-biz”, Overbye as impresario, would be “science” degenerating into ego-driven alas mere seance!!!
#3
Ben Bederson, one of my old NYU. graduate school plasma/atomic physics(his expertise) professor’s comment “This is the closest I have ever seen in NYT to a genuine scientific article in a peer reviewed physics journal. It was thrilling to read, (capitalizing his words for emphasis) ‘EVEN THOUGH I BARELY UNDERSTOOD MUCH OF ITS CONTENT, THE SAME AS WHEN I READ PEER REVIEWED PHYSICS JOURNALS'”. evokes the same awe(s _ _ t) as his incomprehensible plasma physics lectures. Methinks maybe he was writing this as recent American Physical Society journals editor-in-chief official to promote physics, but really Ben, if you barely understood much of its contents, the same as when you read a peer reviewed paper, then, like Timothy Glennon’s first comment yesterday (now deleted it seems) “Articles like this, although I got through it all, give me a headache… literally…. trying to follow the flow of words and make sense out of the concepts and conclusions…finally filling me, a well educated, intelligent, and well-read adult, with wonder at how much I don’t know and will never know or understand about something that so clearly has great relevance and meaning to so many people, witness the replies here…it’s very humbling”. Such “jargonial-obfuscation” aka fancy shmancy lingo to snow the rubes is mere media-hype P.R. spin-doctoring “show-biz”.
It’s only August, not X-mas, but this snow job is early; “thrilling” maybe, but gibberish in its meaning which is after all why SHOULD exist.
#4
Equally believable is classic oriental “the universe is a kumquat, unless it is a persimmon” or “you can never sometimes tell what you least expect most”. Just as likely is Siegel “Sephirot”(Hebrew: “numbers”) cosmology scenario “It’s a Jack-in-the-Box Universe” [abstract math distorted online] “Known Unknowns Versus Unknown Unknowns” wherein:
(1) starts by hypothesizing(string-theory?) ten-dimensions 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9; digit-averaged via “Benford’s-law” 〈P〉=log[1+1/d]= log[(d+1)/d] whose algebraic-inversion automatically creates only Bose-Einstein quantum-statistics(BEQS)/ bosons photons d≈1/[e^(P) -1] at one point which springs into existence as automatic “Big-Bangâ€/Creation
(2) Guth exponential inflation is automatic dark-energy because the point which came into existence expends exponentially and exponentially dilutes this boson-creation “Big-Bangâ€
(3) power-spectrum of BEQS/bosons is hyperbolic “1”/( e^(ħω/(kT))-1)≈(infra-red limit(ħω<kT)Taylor-expansion)≈1/( [1+ħω/(kT)+⋯]-1)≈1/(ħω/(kT))~(kT)/ħω~"1"/ω origin of cosmic microwave background
(4) BEQS/bosons photons Mellin-transform into Fermi-Dirac quantum-statistics/ fermions particles dominating nuclei
(5) automatic hidden dark-matter via Siegel complex quantum-statistics in Nottale fractal-dimensions
Einstein's famous anti-QM quote "God does not play dice" might be modified by Benford's-law of craps!? Quoting Heinrich Heine "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten"!!!