Quote:
Originally Posted by uke_master
Seems like it is more like self styled philosophers having a go at pseudo-physics.
A quick check on the credentials of the authors, and they check out. Lee Smolin is credentialed theoretical physicist and Roberto Unger has taught law at Harvard and is also credentialed with several works on philosophy.
Not that this promises a fine a book, but I don't think there is any immediate need to discount the book based on the merits of its authors.
That the book travels into controversial territory isn't necessarily a bad thing. I perused some negative reviews done by peers and they didn't really offer very insightful commentary on why the book was bad other than intellectual re-writes of "this isn't how I'm used to seeing things". That included one butthurt mathematician who had problems accepting that mathematics could be seen as a mere tool and not always the most helpful one.
The multiverse (as I understand the book hypothesizes about) is a speculative concept, but there must be room for speculation in physics. Most of our reigning paradigm of physics was born in ideas that were at some point speculative, held less than perfect evidence and faced peer resistance. As long as one is honest about being speculative, this is not problematical.
If speculation becomes bombastic, we have an issue.
Last edited by tame_deuces; 04-28-2016 at 09:55 AM.