November 10, 2022 • 47 mins
Lee Smolin is a founding faculty member at Perimeter Institute and one of the world’s best-known voices in theoretical physics. He is a co-founder of loop quantum gravity, together with Abhay Ashtekar and Carlo Rovelli. Smolin is also the author of numerous popular science books, including The Trouble with Physics, The Life of the Cosmos, and Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum. In this conversation with Lauren and Colin, Smolin shares his philosophical outlook on quantum mechanics and argues that it is not a final theory, but rather points us in the direction of a new understanding of nature. He also discusses what motivates his popular writing, his challenges with Parkinson’s disease, and how that struggle has shaped his perspectives in recent years. View the episode transcript here.
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Conversations at the Perimeter is co-hosted by Perimeter Teaching Faculty member Lauren Hayward and journalist-turned-science communicator Colin Hunter. In each episode, they chat with a guest scientist about their research, the challenges they encounter, and the drive that keeps them searching for answers.
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(00:00):
(gentle upbeat music)
- Hey everyone and welcome back to
Conversations at the Perimeter.
It's Colin and I'm here with Lauren
and on this episode we arethrilled to share our fascinating
conversation with Lee Smolin.
Lee is a founding faculty memberhere at Perimeter Institute
(00:23):
having joined a little over 20 years ago,
when the institute was inits very earliest stages.
- I remember when Ifirst came to Perimeter
and it really felt like an honor
just to be thinkingabout theoretical physics
in the same building as Lee Smolin.
He's a co-founder of Loop Quantum Gravity
and he's the author ofmany popular science books,
including "The Trouble with Physics"
(00:43):
"Three Roads to Quantum Gravity"
and "Einstein's Unfinished Revolution,
"The Search For WhatLies Beyond The Quantum".
- Lee shared with us hisphilosophical perspectives
on quantum mechanics too.
He argues that quantum mechanics
isn't actually a final theory,
but is pointing in the direction of
some new understanding of nature.
And I was actually relievedto hear Lee talk about this
(01:05):
because if Lee Smolinstruggles to make sense
of quantum theory,
then maybe there's hopefor the rest of us.
And Lee sees fundamentalphysics as intertwined with art
and with music andphilosophy and other ways
that we humans try tomake sense of our world
and our place in it.
- Lee also opened up tous about his challenges
with Parkinson's disease
and how these struggleshave shaped his thinking
(01:27):
in recent years.
We typically conduct theseconversations in person,
but for this one, Lee joined us via Zoom.
So, you may notice that it sounds
a little bit differentthan other episodes,
but no matter the setting,
we know that you're gonna be fascinated
with Lee's insights and perspectives.
So, let's step inside thePerimeter with Lee Smolin.
(01:48):
Hi Lee, and thank youso much for joining us
on Conversations at the Perimeter.
We're so excited to talk to you today.
I know that you're well known as somebody
studying the most fundamentalquestions in the universe,
so, we thought we couldstart off by asking you
about some of the questionsthat you're trying to answer.
(02:09):
- I'm a storyteller andI'm interested in telling
the biggest story possible,
which means that thestory that I want to tell,
is the story of what we are.
What we human beings are.
Who we are.
Why we are and how it makes sense
that we're in this universe.
In other words, the story I want to tell
(02:29):
is the opposite of a religious story
where the explanation forevery question ultimately
goes down to some arbitrary act of faith.
And I'm also interestedin the opposite of that,
which is epitomized by Steve Weinberg's
Epigram in his first book that says,
(02:51):
"The more we understandabout the universe,
"the more pointless it may be".
And he didn't know that that was pun on
we use of points and general relativity,
but what he was saying was that,
nothing that we know about nature explains
what human beings are,
why we're here, what consciousness is,
(03:12):
or these things that everybodyis really interested in.
So, I'm interested inunderstanding the universe so well,
that even such obscure questions like,
why there is life in the universe?
Have an interesting answer.
That includes making senseof quantum mechanics,
because look, let's be real here.
(03:34):
Quantum mechanics makes no sense.
(Colin laughing)- I was hoping
you would say that.
- No, it really makes nosense. Most of my best friends,
many of them like Carlo Rovelli
believe that time is not fundamental.
They believe that realityis not what we think it is
and we can get into that onhis time and they basically,
(03:59):
in a certain sense given up,
because they don't have theanswers to the questions like,
why is the universe hospitable to life?
That's what I'm interested in.
I'm interested in whatis the law of physics?
Not just what are the laws,
but how do they come to be the laws,
rather than other laws?
And I'm interested in the old problem
of putting together Einstein'stheory of general relativity
(04:22):
with quantum mechanics.
And I actually think I didthat and then I did that again
and then somebody else didit a different way again.
The problem with that problem is that,
it doesn't seem to be very unique.
But anyway, that's anotherone of those things
I'm interested in.
- Going back to your answerabout telling stories,
these are the biggeststories that you're tackling.
(04:44):
What inspires you to chase
these most fundamental questions?
- You know, I think thatany line of questioning
that you start on leads back to them.
Sooner or later if you'rehonest about your ignorance,
you end up thinking about those question.
- I think traditionally thereare questions that have been
thought outside of the realmof science, or physics.
(05:06):
These are questions forphilosophers and theologians,
or is that a mis-categorization?
Is that a misunderstanding of them?
- Start with any questionand in three moves
we'll get to why is the universe here
and why are the laws what they seem to be?
Let me rephrase what you said.
There is a metaphysic thatwas introduced by Newton
(05:27):
and other people of the time
and it's an expressionof their religious faith,
very much when you look into it,
because they were deep in religion
and even practices ofmysticism and so forth.
And speaking particularly of Isaac Newton,
but there were others like that.
(05:48):
Kepler was a great mystic
and they had a metaphysical fantasy
and their metaphysicalfantasy went like this.
And I want you to guess who I'm quoting
as I give the quote from memory.
Supposing that there were laws
(06:09):
which could tell exactly where
every particle would beany time in the future,
if you knew where it wasnow and how it was traveling
and suppose you were really,really, really good at algebra
and you could compute all those laws
and figure out where everything,
(06:30):
every particle who would be in the future,
then we would have no agency,
no will, our existence, our decisions,
our ethical quandarieswould be inconsequential,
because everything would be predicted
from the motions of particles,
which has no meaning on those levels.
The amazing thing aboutthis argument is that
(06:52):
even if you aren't so smart,
just being able to say thatthere are laws of that kind
makes those dreadfulconsequences apparent.
Now who did I quote?
- I'll go with René Descartes.
- No.- No?
- I know I saw it quotedin one of the articles
I was reading about youbefore we began the recording,
(07:13):
but I now can't remember who it was by.
- Let's save this for the end
of the podcast.- Oh suspense, okay.
- Oh, okay.
You know, I wanna ask how you can measure
when you're making progresson these kinds of questions,
because these are suchfundamental questions.
What are the laws and howdid they come to be laws?
Have you been able to measureprogress in answering these
(07:35):
questions throughout your career?
- All good questions havecontradictory paradoxical answers,
so I'm gonna answer it like that.
One is the answer that has always been,
which is that we can test our ideas,
because we use mathematicsto formulate our ideas.
We can compute exactly asthe quote would tell us to do
(07:58):
the future and test that.
And we can do that invery restricted cases
like walls rolling downin (indistinct) planes,
or the motion of a planet like Mars.
But when we can do it,
we really do it and it really works.
So, that's the most impressive thing
because you can have anargument like Newton says,
(08:20):
here's my calculationof how the comets move.
And Leibniz is very philosophical,
says blah blah philosophy blah,
philosophy blah philosophy,blah, blah, philosophy.
And Newton says,
"No, it really works.
"Here's where you'll see thecomet if you look in the sky"
and some other philosophers go,
blah, blah, blah,
well the audience prefers Newton,
because it really works,
(08:40):
even if Newton's metaphysicsis religious nonsense
and philosophical nonsense.
So, that's roughly what happenedand that's still the case.
If I come along as I do and am doing
and claim that I have a deepertheory of microscopic physics
that explains quantum mechanics.
(09:00):
You don't have to takeall these crazy things
and just ignore that theydon't make any sense.
Ultimately the question is,
can you make a predictionthat shows where your theory
would differ fromordinary quantum mechanics
and can we run that test?
That's actually always been the answer
(09:21):
and that's the real answer.
But we in the 21st century aresociologically sophisticated.
So, we tell that storya little bit different.
We say there are communitiesthat validates science
and how do you become amember of that community?
You become a member of that community
(09:41):
by learning the technical side,
by learning the techniquesthat those in the community
have discovered are verygood for finding errors
in your work.
Because what a scientific community is,
is a group of people whoare pledged to each other
to be honest and to in good faith
(10:02):
and by the way,
I didn't realize that whenI used that expression,
but it comes from Jean PaulSartre in The Existentialist
and so forth apparently.
But we know what it means,
good faith means you're nottrying to play any tricks,
or cheat anybody.
You report honestly theresult of your observations
and your calculationsand your experiments.
(10:22):
And then the community agrees to be bound
by those displays of likelihood.
I become a member of the community
of theoretical physicists,when I write a PhD thesis,
which impresses my communityenough that they can trust me,
because nobody's gonna gocheck everybody else's errors.
(10:44):
So, I think that this isreally how science works.
There at these communities,
membership in the communitiesthat's highly controlled
as as you might say it should be.
And I know that this willmake some people unhappy,
but I think this is the way it works
and the only way it can work
and something is judged to be part of the
(11:07):
current understanding, or the canon,
when it's past many tests of this kind.
It gives a fantasticsurprising predictions,
but the whole socialstructure explains to me
what I see happening allthe time in seminars and..
- Well, I was gonnaask, you mentioned that
a lot of your efforts and your work
(11:29):
have been trying to makesense of quantum mechanics,
trying to figure out what'smissing, or what's incomplete.
Can you just take us backa little bit for listeners
who may not be familiar with the challenge
that you're up against.
Why is figuring out quantum mechanics
such a a challenge and andunifying with general relativity?
Why is this such afocal point for physics?
(11:52):
- Because it's embarrassing.
It's really embarrassingthat the best explanation
that we have has so muchthat's contradictory
and against realism.
So, let me give some definitions here.
I am a realist,
I hope you are realist.
If you believe that thereis a reality independent
(12:16):
of our experience andour knowledge, or belief
and that it is possible to gainknowledge about that reality
by some methodology like theone that I was describing,
that as it's stableenough and concrete enough
that you can gain knowledge of it,
then we're realist and wesometimes say we're realist
(12:36):
about different things.
I'm a realist about atoms.
That means I don't think thatatoms are just a contrivance
to do a calculation.
They're really, really are atoms
and I'm also a realist aboutlife, about consciousness,
about colors and I'm alsoa realist about electrons
and protons and atoms andmolecules and quarks and so forth,
(13:01):
which means I want a version of the theory
that explains anddescribes all those things,
which doesn't depend on my observation,
or my belief, or my existence.
Finally, mechanics comeas in many formulations,
which is interesting enough
and many of thoseformulations not only violate
(13:23):
that principle of realism,
but they have all sorts ofrhetoric about how it's dead
and it was killed off by Nietzsche,
or the Nazis, or whoever.
That now we live in arelational world where,
your belief is as good asmine, or anybody else's
because we're all just relativeman and I'm against that.
(13:44):
But that is a very, thatrelativistic point of view
is very common in the20th and the 21st century.
And many of the people whodeveloped quantum mechanics
were anti-realist.
They didn't believe thatthere were any facts
about the world which were true,
except when they werecreated by intervention,
(14:07):
by human beings doing experiments.
- Just to ask one question there,
would those people havedescribed themselves
as anti-realists at the time?
- Oh for sure.- Really?
- Sure, read Niels Bohr.
I mean these people had agendas
and you have to think thiswas after the first world war,
(14:30):
there was a lot of peoplewho were anti-realist
and all kinds of things,
because they were sodismayed and disappointed
by what had just happened.
Niels Bohr was a closestudent of Schopenhauer
and other anti-realist philosophers.
(14:52):
- When I hear the term anti-realist,
I read it in your book many times,
realist versus anti-realist.
The anti-realist strikes meas a shorthand for saying,
well it must be wrong.
If it's not real then itmust be unreal, incorrect.
But that's not the exactdistinction we're making is it?
- My distinction since I'm a realist.
(15:12):
But I have, as I said,
genuinely many very goodfriends who are not realists.
- So how do they likebeing called anti-realists?
- They love it.
It puts them right therewhere they wanna be.
See, a lot of this is aboutpeople positioning themselves
in a bigger context thantheoretical physics.
They wanted to see themselves
(15:33):
in the big philosophical fights
of the late 20th century,
which have to do withmodernism and postmodernism,
and so there is a consistentstory about quantum physics
as a great advance ofnon-realism, or anti-realism.
- You know, I think about
(15:54):
the Copenhagen interpretationand the idea of many worlds,
some of the things that people,
that their minds tend to rebel against,
because these things are so strange.
But you make it clear in in your books
that quantum mechanics isyou said it to us earlier,
it's strange, it's bizarre.
It if it's inherently unusual,
or counter intuitive to us,
(16:16):
that doesn't make itanti realistic theory?
- Yes I think it does.
But there are versionsof quantum mechanics
that are completely realists,
like pilot wave theory of de Broglie
which was actually the firstversion of quantum mechanics
that was developed because de Broglie
developed his version of quantum mechanics
(16:37):
which was completelyrealist about a year before,
if I remember the history right,
Heisenberg and Schrödingerdeveloped their versions,
which was 1927.
Schrödinger also was a realist
and he thought he wasdeveloping a realist formulation
of quantum mechanic buthe turned out he was wrong
(16:57):
about his own formulation.
Truly his great regret.
- Some theories likeHeisenberg's and others,
seem to rise the top ofthe pile so to speak.
They seem to be more popular,
or more widely taught than others.
Is that a fluke of history, or is that
why is de Broglie pilot wave theory
not the theory thateverybody's most familiar with?
(17:21):
- First of all, let me say at the start,
I think it's changing, thankfully.
This is the part of thestory I want to tell.
There was a generation thatinvented quantum mechanics
and that included Einstein, whostarted the whole thing off,
even though he repudiatedthe direction it took.
Niels Bohr, Heisenberg,Schrödinger, Max Born
(17:44):
and a bunch of other people,
who were all about as old as the century.
Einstein was older and Bohr was older
and Schrödinger it was a bit older.
But typically we'retalking sort of 1925, 1926
and Heisenberg was 22,23 and they were all
(18:07):
foundationally oriented.
And what I mean by that, isthat they thought in terms of
these fundamental questionsand they had a good education
in the history of attemptsto answer these questions,
which means that theycould read philosophy
and they had school read philosophy
(18:27):
and they were philosophicallysophisticated.
And that is a style ofphysics to reference
the great philosophers, orphilosophical physicists
in your arguments tomake the slow, careful,
deep, reflective arguments in thought
(18:51):
that is the best of that kind of science.
And they dominated science in the period
that we're talking about,
which is sort of 1900 to early 1930s
'cause that you had tothink about those questions
to push science forward.
Things were so unexpected and surprising
(19:11):
that if you didn't have aphilosophical orientation
you might give up.
So, that community wasalso centered in Europe,
it's important to say.
It was centered in Paris and Berlin
and a little bit in London,not Cambridge, Oxford,
a little bit in the northern countries
like Copenhagen
(19:33):
and the one place that didn't take on
that philosophical orientation was really
and always was in the United States.
But what happened in World War II,
is first of all thecountries and the cultures
that supported that kindof science where desolated
(19:53):
and the center of physics
moved very quickly to the United States
and there it encountered
a very pragmatic scientificand otherwise culture.
So, here's an example.
Freeman Dyson who was themore I reflect on him,
he died a few years ago andhe was a little bit a friend
(20:17):
and I wish I had been a better friend.
But anyway, Freeman Dysonliked to put it this way,
he said "In mostgenerations the old people
"of the conservatives and theyoung people are the rebels".
But in physics in his generation,
the old people were a bunch of rebels
who were (indistinct) andthey were always arguing
about philosophy and meaning
(20:39):
and meanwhile there were allthese great physics problems
to solve by taking the theory,
however badly understoodand just applying it
to atoms and moleculesand solids and gases
and nuclear gravity andparticles and so forth.
And they were making tremendous progress
without worrying about the foundations.
(21:01):
- Is that the met up andcalculate generation?
Yes, that's the allegedly the set
and calculating generation.
- For more practical matters,
were pressing rather thanthe philosophical ones?
- Yes and Richard Feynman isthe great hero of that period.
- Do you think it's possible to say,
(21:23):
is there an ideal balancebetween addressing
these more philosophical questions,
versus more pragmatic ones?
- I think it dependson what has to be done,
for what was happening inscience in that period,
which is sort of 1930 to
1973 or so, 19
(21:46):
and I'll tell you in aminute how I'm dating them.
It was what was needed.
The people who werearguing about philosophy,
were not getting anywhere.
What they were doing
was not appealing to the younger people.
But let me introduce a contrastand raise some questions
that I've recently beenthinking a lot about.
(22:07):
I've been reading Menards in New York,
he's a New Yorker editor and writer
and a professor of English at Harvard.
He's a very great sortof intellectual historian
and he has a book about the history of art
and thought during the Cold War
and of course the samething happened in art.
(22:27):
That is the center of art,
which in Europe in oldEurope was of course Paris
and Paris is where you had to go,
moved to New York in the 1930s and 1940s,
because people were fleeing Nazism
and it's, he documents thatand it's extraordinary,
500 of the best painters in the world
(22:50):
moved from Paris to New York.
The Americans took overand learned a great deal
from the Europeans and then the Europeans,
many of them went back to Europe
but the center of art stayed in New York.
Something like thathappens in physics too,
I think there's a greatbook to be written.
(23:10):
I couldn't write, of those artists
and those physicistsencountering each other.
For example, the greatanthropologist Levy Strauss
lived in the samebuilding as Claude Shannon
and they never met,
but I think there were some meets.
I think Feynman hung out.
(23:31):
Feynman was also a jazz musician,
he was also an abstractexpressionist painter.
I think Einstein hung out in the so-called
black side of Princeton.
Freeman certainly did, David Bone did
and I think there's a lotof history about how science
was taken over by the Americans
(23:52):
and the American pragmatic philosophy.
Now, I said that you askedme, is that the right thing?
Well, it's the right thing in the context
in which you have a lot ofdiscoveries experimentally,
which fit in to the existing paradigm.
What happens is that that paradigm
runs out in the middle late 1970s
(24:16):
it's in a very interestingquestion why it runs out.
But basically, it's largest triumph
was the standard modelof particle physics.
It's stopped producing new discoveries,
communicating to ourfriends here at Perimeter,
who do particle physics.
Excuse me, your theory has been dead
since before you were born.
(24:37):
Seriously, I mean do they react to it?
Well maybe now in 2022,
the bravest of them writepapers about the crisis
in particle physics.
But anybody with eyes to see,
understood there was acrisis in the methodology
of elementary particlephysics already in 1975, 1976.
(24:58):
For example, AbrahamPrice who somewhat later
became a friend of mine,we used to have lunch off
in the Rockefeller University.
And he was a great physicistwho was in New York
and was a great appreciator of art.
For example, he had a Picassothat he had bought in Paris
(25:20):
in 1945 with all hisfamily's like savings,
which survived the war one Picasso.
Ron was of that earlier culture
and we often talked about the transition
and of course he wrote somegreat books about himself
and about Einstein and Bohn and so forth.
(25:43):
My view has been since I entered physics
in the middle 70s, thatthe current dominant
methodology was failing.
I don't understand whyeverybody else doesn't see it.
(Indistinct) and he pointed out clearly.
- So, how do you think weneed to shift our focus,
(26:03):
or perspective moving forward from today?
- We all need to takea deep breath and say,
we theorists of all kinds,
everything we've beenworking has yet to lead to
substantial progress since the 1970s.
Can we say it again?
We need to get normalizedto that, the situation.
(26:26):
Therefore what do we need?
We need people who are rebels,
who are not concernedwith their social status
within the field of science, or otherwise.
We always need people whoare great technically,
but we need them to be imaginative,
to be independent thinkers,
to have their own compassand to have deep curiosity
(26:51):
and abundant current.
- Lee, throughout your career
you've been seen as a rebel yourself,
someone who's a littleoutside of the norms
and likes to challenge conventions.
Did that come naturally?
Do you consider that aprofessional hallmark of yours?
Where does that rebelliousness come from?
- But it's not true.
(27:12):
I mean I'm not that kind of person.
My stick, or my gain,
which is very clear ifyou look at all my papers,
is stealing a really good idea
from one domain in theoretical physics
and applying it to another,
or sometimes another domainof science outside of physics.
That's when I'm good atsniffing out congruences
(27:34):
and similes and metaphorsin the mathematics spheres.
Which means that I know thepresent stuff pretty well.
If you want rebels, real rebels,
you want people who are taking much more
outlandish risks than I do.
I take a very controlled risk.
I take the most importantidea in particle physics
(27:55):
for the last 100 years,
which is the close connectionbetween quantum gauge fields
and dynamics having of stringsand membranes and so forth.
That idea was invented byRussian high energy physicists,
Sasha Parley (indistinct) and his friends
and I just took that idea andapplied it to Quantum Gravity
(28:20):
with a few more necessaryinputs from friends,
like (indistinct) and Carlo Rovelli
I don't understand.
To me that was a deeplyconservative move to me.
Now, of course it may not be right,
'cause we don't have experiments,
but it's doing pretty well.
- On the topic of some ofthese maybe rebel ideas.
(28:44):
I wanted to go to aquestion that was sent in
from one of our listeners.
So, this question comes from Kenneth.
- Hello everyone,
my name is Kenneth
and I am a student of thePerimeter Institute's PSI Start
summer program and currentlya software engineer
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
My question for Dr. Lee Smolin is,
(29:05):
what new potentialtheories of quantum gravity
have not been investigatedto their furthest extents yet
and you believe are worth the efforts
of future mathematicians and physicists
hoping to break new grounds in the space?
- Mine.
No, it's,
(people laughing)
I need help.
I have a great theoryabout quantum gravity
(29:26):
and quantum quantum mechanicsand how they fit together
and start to advertise it if you let me.
No, the whole point of being a scientist
as opposed to an engineer is that
you choose your research problems.
And the thing that mostcharacterizes a scientist
(29:47):
and is most correlatedwith their success, or not,
is their choice of research problems.
So, I'm not gonna tell him mychoice of research problems.
If he wants to offer hisservices as an engineer
to a research program,which would be very welcome,
then find somebody doingsomething you're interested in.
(30:08):
But I'm not gonna tellyou what's interesting.
- I actually have a follow up question
from another listener.
This is from Sandeep in India.
- Hi Dr. Smolin.
My name is Sandeep and I am from India.
What charm does physics have in the era of
high paying tech and finance jobs,
if you think completelyin terms of employability?
(30:30):
- I don't wanna be one ofthese old guys who says
what is the current generation coming to?
They've got no values and no passion
and they don't care aboutanything except job security.
I mean, who are these people?
It's a privilege to be paid towork on understanding nature.
It's a privilege to be able to paint
(30:53):
and further the understanding that art has
of the world in the future.
It's a privilege to be ableto play musical instruments
for other people's enjoymentand pleasure and that's it.
If you wanna be more highlypaid than your neighbor,
then do something else.
(31:13):
Please don't get in our way.
- You've mentioned several times
when referring to Feynmanand other scientists
that an important factoris the company they keep.
Who they're hanging out with,
where and when.
Can you speak to that in your own life
and your own work,
how the company you've kept has helped you
in your life and work?
- Yes.
(31:33):
First of all, I've been very,
very fortunate in friends in science.
And that's something I didn'tknow when I went into science
inspired by this fairytale about Einstein
and transcending blah blah, blah, blah,
is that you can make great friends,
wonderful friends in science
and I have done so
and Carlo Rovelli for example,we did great work together.
(31:55):
Our best work Carlo likes to say,
is the work we did together
and we disagree about a lot of things,
but we're deeply friendsand support each other.
And I feel that way about(indistinct) who with Carlo,
we made the quantum gravity more, or less
and other people (indistinct) Jacobson,
(32:15):
I now am working with some amazing people.
In addition to that,
I was very fortunate in meeting artists,
good artists (indistinct).
And this is a strange story,
but it really was very influential on me.
I now look back and I've written six books
and I'm working on the next two.
(32:36):
And let me first say thatit's been a great privilege
to write those books,
because each one offered an opportunity
to think carefully through some problems
that was bugging me in science.
That's what they really,
each of them should be understood as.
They're not journalistic,they're not popularization,
(32:56):
they are meant for curious non-scientists,
who have the samequestions, but they're not,
both science outreach is going for,
which I'm frankly very puzzled by.
And as a result of writing these books,
I was in a position to meetand again, genuine friends,
(33:20):
a number of people who areat the edge of their field
in some of the key fundamental fields.
You see, I think thateverything human beings do
is about the future.
We've always been developing,
we've always been changing and learning.
And I think that there area small number of domains
(33:42):
in which we human beings havesince the very beginning,
been driving into the future.
There have been people who'vebeen trying to understand
about nature that we find ourselves in.
And there are peoplewho have tried to push
our understanding of the spiritual world
that we find ourself in
and there are people who havebeen trying to understand
(34:03):
our political world, theworld of other human beings,
and that's it, that's sort of it.
All the creative arts and so forth to me
go back to those small numbersand then you'll imagine
the early artists, the early scientists,
the early mystics sittingaround their campfire,
whatever they did and talking
(34:25):
because it's all about talk.
And so, through some almostpurely accidental meetings,
most of which had to do with
that I was writing these books.
I met some extraordinary artists.
And they've become very good friends
and that greatly, greatly, greatly,
enriched my understandingof my life and the world.
(34:49):
St. Chris and (indistinct)
Beth Turr and many, many others.
- Is there a direct relationship there
in that your scientific ideas sometimes
get a spark from their creative ideas ,
or is it less tangible than that
and more just about speaking
to creative people about the world?
- It's less tangible than that.
(35:09):
One of the things thatI would never do is,
do a art and science andhow are they related talk.
When St Claire and I get together,
which isn't as often as I'd like it to be,
we still talk about techniquesand we talk about ideas.
We talk about it as twopeople who are very curious.
(35:32):
- Do you have an artistic side as well?
Are you a creator of art, or music?
- No, I mean, I can playaround, but I used to play jazz,
but I got good enough to play with people
who were really, really good
and then I understood then I would never,
there was no point.
- I wanna go back tothe topic of your books.
As you mentioned, you'vewritten six books.
(35:54):
This is a really huge endeavor
and I wanna ask if you cansay a little bit more on
why you decided to startwriting these books
and what you hope readerswill take away from them?
- There was an opportunityto think through
what I was very puzzled about,
which are the questions of what determines
(36:15):
what the laws and physics are.
How are the laws of physics chosen?
The theory, or the speculationabout string theory
had expressed the view thatthere might be one theory
that was somehow perfect
and was picked out byits mathematical beauty,
or something like that.
And we had then discoveredthrough the 1980s
(36:38):
that that wasn't true.
That there were vastnumbers of string theorists.
So, I went looking for away you could understand
how the laws were chosenby some process analogous
to natural selection and Ihad found an answer to that.
(36:58):
That is several scenariosthat worked exactly
and did make predictions.
And I was confusedabout how that could be,
how could a theory like natural selection,
which is statistical and probabilistic,
let's just say is probabilistic
can produce a deeper understanding
(37:20):
than a more traditional theory,
which just has one version of the laws.
So, that's why I tookon writing that book.
I was given the opportunity,never look back.
I mean each time I've said that's it.
I'm never writing another book again.
It is not easy to write, it'snot easy to write a good book.
(37:42):
I think I have written six good books.
Oh, but some of it is alsothat I like to express myself,
I like to write, because itallowed me to think through
the questions that I was struggling with.
It wasn't a waste of time for me.
- I was gonna ask that,
if writing the books for a non-specialist,
(38:02):
a curious, non-scientific audience,
if that forces you to geta sense of your own work
in a different way.
If it forces you to lookthrough a different lens?
Perhaps not the mathematical lens.
- Yeah, the mathematicsis often a scaffold
to hold you in a position
where you're not actually very stable.
(38:24):
So making, explaining whysomething is a good idea
without mathematics is harder
than explaining it with mathematics.
I mean, everything you doinfluences everything else.
I mean, when you're writing a book
that you want to capturepeople's attention
for two or 300 pages, styleis very, very important.
(38:45):
And we don't teach stylein physics class at school.
- How did you develop yourown sense of voice, or style?
Was it trial and error over time?
- It was good teachers includingsome very good editors.
It's a very differentthan an academic style.
In an academic style,
you tell them what you'regonna tell it to them,
(39:07):
you tell them what you just told them.
It's very linear, it's very structured.
And we can argue about that whether
to what extent that'sa good, or a bad thing.
But you can't do that in abook for general readers.
That kills a book ifyou use that structure
from your academic mind.
- And you've written six books now,
(39:28):
each is on a different topic,
but are there any common themes
that kind of go through all of your books?
- Yes, they're all interested in time.
They're all interested in theconsequences for the future
of how we understand the world now.
And I mean in some sense there,
(39:49):
the one research programlaid out over many pages,
but in the last book "Einstein'sUnfinished Revolution"
I explicitly lay out that research program
and that is my researchprogram and it has always been,
but somehow it stayed in the background.
The other thing is the morepersonal feelings about nature
(40:13):
and society and how the future is going.
Several of the books have epilogues
and what I was going to do,
at some time, I'd liketo just do something
where I read all the epilogues in order.
I won't read the epilogueof the first one,
but there's a quote fromSt Chris (indistinct)
(40:35):
which opens it and Ican do that from memory.
And this is in response to a question
of what is postmodernism?
And he said, "If the purpose of modernism
"was to burn down the old classic house,
"which we've gotten quite bored with,
(40:55):
"then the achievement of postmodernism
"has been just to play around with
"the little char pieces that are left".
Which is a pretty pure thing to be doing
given that winter is coming.
And that's typical.
That's not me.
That's typical St Clair,
but we're after the same thing.
(41:16):
- What would you say you're after?
- I'm after having a scientificunderstanding of nature,
which gives us humanbeings a place in nature
where we can feel at home.
- Is there a a sense of consolationthat you are looking for
where perhaps religions,or moralities or all short,
(41:36):
are you looking for a senseof meaning behind the science?
- Maybe.
I want better than consolation.
Look, what's tragic about life,
which is of course deathand pain and illness
is where it's really notconsolable, it's inconsolable.
But living a happy life, a good life,
(41:58):
in my very minor viewbecause I'm not very wise,
is that there's no answer to that.
The only good thing about themis that more for most of us,
the price we pay for awonderful life comes at the end.
I don't think there's a consolation.
There I'm very influencedby Roberto Mangabeira Unger
(42:20):
who I wrote the fourth book with.
- You mentioned earlierthat you're working on one,
or two more books and you saidyou wouldn't talk about them
unless we asked you to.
So, can I ask you to tellus what you're working on?
- Sure.
One is about what we'velearned, or what I've learned
and it will be a short book
and it might even be apart of the other book.
(42:42):
When you ask me what I'm interested in,
it's not a very interesting story.
But I dropped out of high school
and I was working in theSan Fernando Valley in LA
and as an apprentice sheet metal guy.
And I used to take my lunchesand rather than hang out
with the other guys who Ididn't really understand.
(43:03):
And it was all guys by the way.
I would take a notebook
and write thoughts aboutphysics and science.
And one day I wrote down in that notebook
what I'm interested in,
is first of all what the universe is
and second, what life is in thecontext of the first answer.
And third, what a human being is,
(43:23):
in the context of the first two answer.
And so I thought itwould be nice to write it
at least a section ofthe book that sums up
what I've learned duringmy life in science.
The other book is aboutParkinson's disease,
which I happen to have.
And I've been reflectingon the implications
(43:43):
of a new treatment, whichinvolves putting a chip basically
in your head and becomingwhat the feminist
science fiction writers call a Cyborg.
That is somebody whose brain is half,
or in any right partmachine and part human.
- Can you tell us a bitabout that experience
(44:05):
so far with Parkinson's?
Has this affected howyou go about your life?
- I don't recommend it, if youwanna recreational disease.
- Stay away?
- It's like you have a high school friend
who has become an alcoholic
and he shows up every few months,
thrown out by his girlfriend
(44:25):
and stays on your couch a few nights
and pulls himself together.
And then time goes on andyou wake up one morning
and you are on the couch.
At first it's relatively minor,
it progresses if you're lucky.
And I am in that case slowly.
I'm still more inconveniencedthan anything else by it.
(44:48):
But it grows in your life.
That's not the story Iwant to tell because,
many, many people suffer of course.
Everybody, at least in their family
and I have nothing to say about that.
But I do have maybe some reflections
that I think we ought to think about,
becoming cyborgs,
(45:09):
because I suspect it'sgonna become more common.
- Are you feeling trepidation about this,
or are you optimistic?
Do you know what to think?
- Well, I don't know whatto think of the experience,
but it's not a difficult decision to make.
I mean all you have to do is meet somebody
who's had the implants,
hang out with them for a while
(45:30):
and they'll show you what they'relike with them turned off.
'Cause everybody has an off button.
They hold it over their chipthat controls the networks
in the brain and they click off
and then you see what they would be like
without the implant and it'snot a difficult (indistinct).
(45:50):
- And this book thatyou're thinking of writing
about your experience with Parkinson's,
do you think it would tiein with some of the themes
that came up in otherbooks you have written?
Would there be still someconnective tissue there?
- Maybe.
Let's see.
Certainly it convincesme happiness in life
is more about character thananything else and success.
(46:13):
And so, the most important scientist
who make the most important influences
and changes and progress in science
are not doing that because they're smarter
than other people, or better situated,
or anything like that.
They're more curiousand they're more honest.
- Well, thank you so much Lee.
(46:34):
This has been really apleasure to speak with you.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This is fun.
- Thanks so much Lee.
(upbeat music)
- Thanks for steppinginside The Perimeter.
If you like what you hear,
please help us spread the word.
You can rate, review and subscribe
to conversations at The Perimeter
wherever you get your podcasts.
(46:56):
Every review really helps us a lot
and it helps more scienceenthusiasts find us.
Thank you for being part of the equation.
(gentle music)
(gentle upbeat music)
- Hey everyone and welcome back to
Conversations at the Perimeter.
It's Colin and I'm here with Lauren
and on this episode we arethrilled to share our fascinating
conversation with Lee Smolin.
Lee is a founding faculty memberhere at Perimeter Institute
(00:23):
having joined a little over 20 years ago,
when the institute was inits very earliest stages.
- I remember when Ifirst came to Perimeter
and it really felt like an honor
just to be thinkingabout theoretical physics
in the same building as Lee Smolin.
He's a co-founder of Loop Quantum Gravity
and he's the author ofmany popular science books,
including "The Trouble with Physics"
(00:43):
"Three Roads to Quantum Gravity"
and "Einstein's Unfinished Revolution,
"The Search For WhatLies Beyond The Quantum".
- Lee shared with us hisphilosophical perspectives
on quantum mechanics too.
He argues that quantum mechanics
isn't actually a final theory,
but is pointing in the direction of
some new understanding of nature.
And I was actually relievedto hear Lee talk about this
(01:05):
because if Lee Smolinstruggles to make sense
of quantum theory,
then maybe there's hopefor the rest of us.
And Lee sees fundamentalphysics as intertwined with art
and with music andphilosophy and other ways
that we humans try tomake sense of our world
and our place in it.
- Lee also opened up tous about his challenges
with Parkinson's disease
and how these struggleshave shaped his thinking
(01:27):
in recent years.
We typically conduct theseconversations in person,
but for this one, Lee joined us via Zoom.
So, you may notice that it sounds
a little bit differentthan other episodes,
but no matter the setting,
we know that you're gonna be fascinated
with Lee's insights and perspectives.
So, let's step inside thePerimeter with Lee Smolin.
(01:48):
Hi Lee, and thank youso much for joining us
on Conversations at the Perimeter.
We're so excited to talk to you today.
I know that you're well known as somebody
studying the most fundamentalquestions in the universe,
so, we thought we couldstart off by asking you
about some of the questionsthat you're trying to answer.
(02:09):
- I'm a storyteller andI'm interested in telling
the biggest story possible,
which means that thestory that I want to tell,
is the story of what we are.
What we human beings are.
Who we are.
Why we are and how it makes sense
that we're in this universe.
In other words, the story I want to tell
(02:29):
is the opposite of a religious story
where the explanation forevery question ultimately
goes down to some arbitrary act of faith.
And I'm also interestedin the opposite of that,
which is epitomized by Steve Weinberg's
Epigram in his first book that says,
(02:51):
"The more we understandabout the universe,
"the more pointless it may be".
And he didn't know that that was pun on
we use of points and general relativity,
but what he was saying was that,
nothing that we know about nature explains
what human beings are,
why we're here, what consciousness is,
(03:12):
or these things that everybodyis really interested in.
So, I'm interested inunderstanding the universe so well,
that even such obscure questions like,
why there is life in the universe?
Have an interesting answer.
That includes making senseof quantum mechanics,
because look, let's be real here.
(03:34):
Quantum mechanics makes no sense.
(Colin laughing)- I was hoping
you would say that.
- No, it really makes nosense. Most of my best friends,
many of them like Carlo Rovelli
believe that time is not fundamental.
They believe that realityis not what we think it is
and we can get into that onhis time and they basically,
(03:59):
in a certain sense given up,
because they don't have theanswers to the questions like,
why is the universe hospitable to life?
That's what I'm interested in.
I'm interested in whatis the law of physics?
Not just what are the laws,
but how do they come to be the laws,
rather than other laws?
And I'm interested in the old problem
of putting together Einstein'stheory of general relativity
(04:22):
with quantum mechanics.
And I actually think I didthat and then I did that again
and then somebody else didit a different way again.
The problem with that problem is that,
it doesn't seem to be very unique.
But anyway, that's anotherone of those things
I'm interested in.
- Going back to your answerabout telling stories,
these are the biggeststories that you're tackling.
(04:44):
What inspires you to chase
these most fundamental questions?
- You know, I think thatany line of questioning
that you start on leads back to them.
Sooner or later if you'rehonest about your ignorance,
you end up thinking about those question.
- I think traditionally thereare questions that have been
thought outside of the realmof science, or physics.
(05:06):
These are questions forphilosophers and theologians,
or is that a mis-categorization?
Is that a misunderstanding of them?
- Start with any questionand in three moves
we'll get to why is the universe here
and why are the laws what they seem to be?
Let me rephrase what you said.
There is a metaphysic thatwas introduced by Newton
(05:27):
and other people of the time
and it's an expressionof their religious faith,
very much when you look into it,
because they were deep in religion
and even practices ofmysticism and so forth.
And speaking particularly of Isaac Newton,
but there were others like that.
(05:48):
Kepler was a great mystic
and they had a metaphysical fantasy
and their metaphysicalfantasy went like this.
And I want you to guess who I'm quoting
as I give the quote from memory.
Supposing that there were laws
(06:09):
which could tell exactly where
every particle would beany time in the future,
if you knew where it wasnow and how it was traveling
and suppose you were really,really, really good at algebra
and you could compute all those laws
and figure out where everything,
(06:30):
every particle who would be in the future,
then we would have no agency,
no will, our existence, our decisions,
our ethical quandarieswould be inconsequential,
because everything would be predicted
from the motions of particles,
which has no meaning on those levels.
The amazing thing aboutthis argument is that
(06:52):
even if you aren't so smart,
just being able to say thatthere are laws of that kind
makes those dreadfulconsequences apparent.
Now who did I quote?
- I'll go with René Descartes.
- No.- No?
- I know I saw it quotedin one of the articles
I was reading about youbefore we began the recording,
(07:13):
but I now can't remember who it was by.
- Let's save this for the end
of the podcast.- Oh suspense, okay.
- Oh, okay.
You know, I wanna ask how you can measure
when you're making progresson these kinds of questions,
because these are suchfundamental questions.
What are the laws and howdid they come to be laws?
Have you been able to measureprogress in answering these
(07:35):
questions throughout your career?
- All good questions havecontradictory paradoxical answers,
so I'm gonna answer it like that.
One is the answer that has always been,
which is that we can test our ideas,
because we use mathematicsto formulate our ideas.
We can compute exactly asthe quote would tell us to do
(07:58):
the future and test that.
And we can do that invery restricted cases
like walls rolling downin (indistinct) planes,
or the motion of a planet like Mars.
But when we can do it,
we really do it and it really works.
So, that's the most impressive thing
because you can have anargument like Newton says,
(08:20):
here's my calculationof how the comets move.
And Leibniz is very philosophical,
says blah blah philosophy blah,
philosophy blah philosophy,blah, blah, philosophy.
And Newton says,
"No, it really works.
"Here's where you'll see thecomet if you look in the sky"
and some other philosophers go,
blah, blah, blah,
well the audience prefers Newton,
because it really works,
(08:40):
even if Newton's metaphysicsis religious nonsense
and philosophical nonsense.
So, that's roughly what happenedand that's still the case.
If I come along as I do and am doing
and claim that I have a deepertheory of microscopic physics
that explains quantum mechanics.
(09:00):
You don't have to takeall these crazy things
and just ignore that theydon't make any sense.
Ultimately the question is,
can you make a predictionthat shows where your theory
would differ fromordinary quantum mechanics
and can we run that test?
That's actually always been the answer
(09:21):
and that's the real answer.
But we in the 21st century aresociologically sophisticated.
So, we tell that storya little bit different.
We say there are communitiesthat validates science
and how do you become amember of that community?
You become a member of that community
(09:41):
by learning the technical side,
by learning the techniquesthat those in the community
have discovered are verygood for finding errors
in your work.
Because what a scientific community is,
is a group of people whoare pledged to each other
to be honest and to in good faith
(10:02):
and by the way,
I didn't realize that whenI used that expression,
but it comes from Jean PaulSartre in The Existentialist
and so forth apparently.
But we know what it means,
good faith means you're nottrying to play any tricks,
or cheat anybody.
You report honestly theresult of your observations
and your calculationsand your experiments.
(10:22):
And then the community agrees to be bound
by those displays of likelihood.
I become a member of the community
of theoretical physicists,when I write a PhD thesis,
which impresses my communityenough that they can trust me,
because nobody's gonna gocheck everybody else's errors.
(10:44):
So, I think that this isreally how science works.
There at these communities,
membership in the communitiesthat's highly controlled
as as you might say it should be.
And I know that this willmake some people unhappy,
but I think this is the way it works
and the only way it can work
and something is judged to be part of the
(11:07):
current understanding, or the canon,
when it's past many tests of this kind.
It gives a fantasticsurprising predictions,
but the whole socialstructure explains to me
what I see happening allthe time in seminars and..
- Well, I was gonnaask, you mentioned that
a lot of your efforts and your work
(11:29):
have been trying to makesense of quantum mechanics,
trying to figure out what'smissing, or what's incomplete.
Can you just take us backa little bit for listeners
who may not be familiar with the challenge
that you're up against.
Why is figuring out quantum mechanics
such a a challenge and andunifying with general relativity?
Why is this such afocal point for physics?
(11:52):
- Because it's embarrassing.
It's really embarrassingthat the best explanation
that we have has so muchthat's contradictory
and against realism.
So, let me give some definitions here.
I am a realist,
I hope you are realist.
If you believe that thereis a reality independent
(12:16):
of our experience andour knowledge, or belief
and that it is possible to gainknowledge about that reality
by some methodology like theone that I was describing,
that as it's stableenough and concrete enough
that you can gain knowledge of it,
then we're realist and wesometimes say we're realist
(12:36):
about different things.
I'm a realist about atoms.
That means I don't think thatatoms are just a contrivance
to do a calculation.
They're really, really are atoms
and I'm also a realist aboutlife, about consciousness,
about colors and I'm alsoa realist about electrons
and protons and atoms andmolecules and quarks and so forth,
(13:01):
which means I want a version of the theory
that explains anddescribes all those things,
which doesn't depend on my observation,
or my belief, or my existence.
Finally, mechanics comeas in many formulations,
which is interesting enough
and many of thoseformulations not only violate
(13:23):
that principle of realism,
but they have all sorts ofrhetoric about how it's dead
and it was killed off by Nietzsche,
or the Nazis, or whoever.
That now we live in arelational world where,
your belief is as good asmine, or anybody else's
because we're all just relativeman and I'm against that.
(13:44):
But that is a very, thatrelativistic point of view
is very common in the20th and the 21st century.
And many of the people whodeveloped quantum mechanics
were anti-realist.
They didn't believe thatthere were any facts
about the world which were true,
except when they werecreated by intervention,
(14:07):
by human beings doing experiments.
- Just to ask one question there,
would those people havedescribed themselves
as anti-realists at the time?
- Oh for sure.- Really?
- Sure, read Niels Bohr.
I mean these people had agendas
and you have to think thiswas after the first world war,
(14:30):
there was a lot of peoplewho were anti-realist
and all kinds of things,
because they were sodismayed and disappointed
by what had just happened.
Niels Bohr was a closestudent of Schopenhauer
and other anti-realist philosophers.
(14:52):
- When I hear the term anti-realist,
I read it in your book many times,
realist versus anti-realist.
The anti-realist strikes meas a shorthand for saying,
well it must be wrong.
If it's not real then itmust be unreal, incorrect.
But that's not the exactdistinction we're making is it?
- My distinction since I'm a realist.
(15:12):
But I have, as I said,
genuinely many very goodfriends who are not realists.
- So how do they likebeing called anti-realists?
- They love it.
It puts them right therewhere they wanna be.
See, a lot of this is aboutpeople positioning themselves
in a bigger context thantheoretical physics.
They wanted to see themselves
(15:33):
in the big philosophical fights
of the late 20th century,
which have to do withmodernism and postmodernism,
and so there is a consistentstory about quantum physics
as a great advance ofnon-realism, or anti-realism.
- You know, I think about
(15:54):
the Copenhagen interpretationand the idea of many worlds,
some of the things that people,
that their minds tend to rebel against,
because these things are so strange.
But you make it clear in in your books
that quantum mechanics isyou said it to us earlier,
it's strange, it's bizarre.
It if it's inherently unusual,
or counter intuitive to us,
(16:16):
that doesn't make itanti realistic theory?
- Yes I think it does.
But there are versionsof quantum mechanics
that are completely realists,
like pilot wave theory of de Broglie
which was actually the firstversion of quantum mechanics
that was developed because de Broglie
developed his version of quantum mechanics
(16:37):
which was completelyrealist about a year before,
if I remember the history right,
Heisenberg and Schrödingerdeveloped their versions,
which was 1927.
Schrödinger also was a realist
and he thought he wasdeveloping a realist formulation
of quantum mechanic buthe turned out he was wrong
(16:57):
about his own formulation.
Truly his great regret.
- Some theories likeHeisenberg's and others,
seem to rise the top ofthe pile so to speak.
They seem to be more popular,
or more widely taught than others.
Is that a fluke of history, or is that
why is de Broglie pilot wave theory
not the theory thateverybody's most familiar with?
(17:21):
- First of all, let me say at the start,
I think it's changing, thankfully.
This is the part of thestory I want to tell.
There was a generation thatinvented quantum mechanics
and that included Einstein, whostarted the whole thing off,
even though he repudiatedthe direction it took.
Niels Bohr, Heisenberg,Schrödinger, Max Born
(17:44):
and a bunch of other people,
who were all about as old as the century.
Einstein was older and Bohr was older
and Schrödinger it was a bit older.
But typically we'retalking sort of 1925, 1926
and Heisenberg was 22,23 and they were all
(18:07):
foundationally oriented.
And what I mean by that, isthat they thought in terms of
these fundamental questionsand they had a good education
in the history of attemptsto answer these questions,
which means that theycould read philosophy
and they had school read philosophy
(18:27):
and they were philosophicallysophisticated.
And that is a style ofphysics to reference
the great philosophers, orphilosophical physicists
in your arguments tomake the slow, careful,
deep, reflective arguments in thought
(18:51):
that is the best of that kind of science.
And they dominated science in the period
that we're talking about,
which is sort of 1900 to early 1930s
'cause that you had tothink about those questions
to push science forward.
Things were so unexpected and surprising
(19:11):
that if you didn't have aphilosophical orientation
you might give up.
So, that community wasalso centered in Europe,
it's important to say.
It was centered in Paris and Berlin
and a little bit in London,not Cambridge, Oxford,
a little bit in the northern countries
like Copenhagen
(19:33):
and the one place that didn't take on
that philosophical orientation was really
and always was in the United States.
But what happened in World War II,
is first of all thecountries and the cultures
that supported that kindof science where desolated
(19:53):
and the center of physics
moved very quickly to the United States
and there it encountered
a very pragmatic scientificand otherwise culture.
So, here's an example.
Freeman Dyson who was themore I reflect on him,
he died a few years ago andhe was a little bit a friend
(20:17):
and I wish I had been a better friend.
But anyway, Freeman Dysonliked to put it this way,
he said "In mostgenerations the old people
"of the conservatives and theyoung people are the rebels".
But in physics in his generation,
the old people were a bunch of rebels
who were (indistinct) andthey were always arguing
about philosophy and meaning
(20:39):
and meanwhile there were allthese great physics problems
to solve by taking the theory,
however badly understoodand just applying it
to atoms and moleculesand solids and gases
and nuclear gravity andparticles and so forth.
And they were making tremendous progress
without worrying about the foundations.
(21:01):
- Is that the met up andcalculate generation?
Yes, that's the allegedly the set
and calculating generation.
- For more practical matters,
were pressing rather thanthe philosophical ones?
- Yes and Richard Feynman isthe great hero of that period.
- Do you think it's possible to say,
(21:23):
is there an ideal balancebetween addressing
these more philosophical questions,
versus more pragmatic ones?
- I think it dependson what has to be done,
for what was happening inscience in that period,
which is sort of 1930 to
1973 or so, 19
(21:46):
and I'll tell you in aminute how I'm dating them.
It was what was needed.
The people who werearguing about philosophy,
were not getting anywhere.
What they were doing
was not appealing to the younger people.
But let me introduce a contrastand raise some questions
that I've recently beenthinking a lot about.
(22:07):
I've been reading Menards in New York,
he's a New Yorker editor and writer
and a professor of English at Harvard.
He's a very great sortof intellectual historian
and he has a book about the history of art
and thought during the Cold War
and of course the samething happened in art.
(22:27):
That is the center of art,
which in Europe in oldEurope was of course Paris
and Paris is where you had to go,
moved to New York in the 1930s and 1940s,
because people were fleeing Nazism
and it's, he documents thatand it's extraordinary,
500 of the best painters in the world
(22:50):
moved from Paris to New York.
The Americans took overand learned a great deal
from the Europeans and then the Europeans,
many of them went back to Europe
but the center of art stayed in New York.
Something like thathappens in physics too,
I think there's a greatbook to be written.
(23:10):
I couldn't write, of those artists
and those physicistsencountering each other.
For example, the greatanthropologist Levy Strauss
lived in the samebuilding as Claude Shannon
and they never met,
but I think there were some meets.
I think Feynman hung out.
(23:31):
Feynman was also a jazz musician,
he was also an abstractexpressionist painter.
I think Einstein hung out in the so-called
black side of Princeton.
Freeman certainly did, David Bone did
and I think there's a lotof history about how science
was taken over by the Americans
(23:52):
and the American pragmatic philosophy.
Now, I said that you askedme, is that the right thing?
Well, it's the right thing in the context
in which you have a lot ofdiscoveries experimentally,
which fit in to the existing paradigm.
What happens is that that paradigm
runs out in the middle late 1970s
(24:16):
it's in a very interestingquestion why it runs out.
But basically, it's largest triumph
was the standard modelof particle physics.
It's stopped producing new discoveries,
communicating to ourfriends here at Perimeter,
who do particle physics.
Excuse me, your theory has been dead
since before you were born.
(24:37):
Seriously, I mean do they react to it?
Well maybe now in 2022,
the bravest of them writepapers about the crisis
in particle physics.
But anybody with eyes to see,
understood there was acrisis in the methodology
of elementary particlephysics already in 1975, 1976.
(24:58):
For example, AbrahamPrice who somewhat later
became a friend of mine,we used to have lunch off
in the Rockefeller University.
And he was a great physicistwho was in New York
and was a great appreciator of art.
For example, he had a Picassothat he had bought in Paris
(25:20):
in 1945 with all hisfamily's like savings,
which survived the war one Picasso.
Ron was of that earlier culture
and we often talked about the transition
and of course he wrote somegreat books about himself
and about Einstein and Bohn and so forth.
(25:43):
My view has been since I entered physics
in the middle 70s, thatthe current dominant
methodology was failing.
I don't understand whyeverybody else doesn't see it.
(Indistinct) and he pointed out clearly.
- So, how do you think weneed to shift our focus,
(26:03):
or perspective moving forward from today?
- We all need to takea deep breath and say,
we theorists of all kinds,
everything we've beenworking has yet to lead to
substantial progress since the 1970s.
Can we say it again?
We need to get normalizedto that, the situation.
(26:26):
Therefore what do we need?
We need people who are rebels,
who are not concernedwith their social status
within the field of science, or otherwise.
We always need people whoare great technically,
but we need them to be imaginative,
to be independent thinkers,
to have their own compassand to have deep curiosity
(26:51):
and abundant current.
- Lee, throughout your career
you've been seen as a rebel yourself,
someone who's a littleoutside of the norms
and likes to challenge conventions.
Did that come naturally?
Do you consider that aprofessional hallmark of yours?
Where does that rebelliousness come from?
- But it's not true.
(27:12):
I mean I'm not that kind of person.
My stick, or my gain,
which is very clear ifyou look at all my papers,
is stealing a really good idea
from one domain in theoretical physics
and applying it to another,
or sometimes another domainof science outside of physics.
That's when I'm good atsniffing out congruences
(27:34):
and similes and metaphorsin the mathematics spheres.
Which means that I know thepresent stuff pretty well.
If you want rebels, real rebels,
you want people who are taking much more
outlandish risks than I do.
I take a very controlled risk.
I take the most importantidea in particle physics
(27:55):
for the last 100 years,
which is the close connectionbetween quantum gauge fields
and dynamics having of stringsand membranes and so forth.
That idea was invented byRussian high energy physicists,
Sasha Parley (indistinct) and his friends
and I just took that idea andapplied it to Quantum Gravity
(28:20):
with a few more necessaryinputs from friends,
like (indistinct) and Carlo Rovelli
I don't understand.
To me that was a deeplyconservative move to me.
Now, of course it may not be right,
'cause we don't have experiments,
but it's doing pretty well.
- On the topic of some ofthese maybe rebel ideas.
(28:44):
I wanted to go to aquestion that was sent in
from one of our listeners.
So, this question comes from Kenneth.
- Hello everyone,
my name is Kenneth
and I am a student of thePerimeter Institute's PSI Start
summer program and currentlya software engineer
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
My question for Dr. Lee Smolin is,
(29:05):
what new potentialtheories of quantum gravity
have not been investigatedto their furthest extents yet
and you believe are worth the efforts
of future mathematicians and physicists
hoping to break new grounds in the space?
- Mine.
No, it's,
(people laughing)
I need help.
I have a great theoryabout quantum gravity
(29:26):
and quantum quantum mechanicsand how they fit together
and start to advertise it if you let me.
No, the whole point of being a scientist
as opposed to an engineer is that
you choose your research problems.
And the thing that mostcharacterizes a scientist
(29:47):
and is most correlatedwith their success, or not,
is their choice of research problems.
So, I'm not gonna tell him mychoice of research problems.
If he wants to offer hisservices as an engineer
to a research program,which would be very welcome,
then find somebody doingsomething you're interested in.
(30:08):
But I'm not gonna tellyou what's interesting.
- I actually have a follow up question
from another listener.
This is from Sandeep in India.
- Hi Dr. Smolin.
My name is Sandeep and I am from India.
What charm does physics have in the era of
high paying tech and finance jobs,
if you think completelyin terms of employability?
(30:30):
- I don't wanna be one ofthese old guys who says
what is the current generation coming to?
They've got no values and no passion
and they don't care aboutanything except job security.
I mean, who are these people?
It's a privilege to be paid towork on understanding nature.
It's a privilege to be able to paint
(30:53):
and further the understanding that art has
of the world in the future.
It's a privilege to be ableto play musical instruments
for other people's enjoymentand pleasure and that's it.
If you wanna be more highlypaid than your neighbor,
then do something else.
(31:13):
Please don't get in our way.
- You've mentioned several times
when referring to Feynmanand other scientists
that an important factoris the company they keep.
Who they're hanging out with,
where and when.
Can you speak to that in your own life
and your own work,
how the company you've kept has helped you
in your life and work?
- Yes.
(31:33):
First of all, I've been very,
very fortunate in friends in science.
And that's something I didn'tknow when I went into science
inspired by this fairytale about Einstein
and transcending blah blah, blah, blah,
is that you can make great friends,
wonderful friends in science
and I have done so
and Carlo Rovelli for example,we did great work together.
(31:55):
Our best work Carlo likes to say,
is the work we did together
and we disagree about a lot of things,
but we're deeply friendsand support each other.
And I feel that way about(indistinct) who with Carlo,
we made the quantum gravity more, or less
and other people (indistinct) Jacobson,
(32:15):
I now am working with some amazing people.
In addition to that,
I was very fortunate in meeting artists,
good artists (indistinct).
And this is a strange story,
but it really was very influential on me.
I now look back and I've written six books
and I'm working on the next two.
(32:36):
And let me first say thatit's been a great privilege
to write those books,
because each one offered an opportunity
to think carefully through some problems
that was bugging me in science.
That's what they really,
each of them should be understood as.
They're not journalistic,they're not popularization,
(32:56):
they are meant for curious non-scientists,
who have the samequestions, but they're not,
both science outreach is going for,
which I'm frankly very puzzled by.
And as a result of writing these books,
I was in a position to meetand again, genuine friends,
(33:20):
a number of people who areat the edge of their field
in some of the key fundamental fields.
You see, I think thateverything human beings do
is about the future.
We've always been developing,
we've always been changing and learning.
And I think that there area small number of domains
(33:42):
in which we human beings havesince the very beginning,
been driving into the future.
There have been people who'vebeen trying to understand
about nature that we find ourselves in.
And there are peoplewho have tried to push
our understanding of the spiritual world
that we find ourself in
and there are people who havebeen trying to understand
(34:03):
our political world, theworld of other human beings,
and that's it, that's sort of it.
All the creative arts and so forth to me
go back to those small numbersand then you'll imagine
the early artists, the early scientists,
the early mystics sittingaround their campfire,
whatever they did and talking
(34:25):
because it's all about talk.
And so, through some almostpurely accidental meetings,
most of which had to do with
that I was writing these books.
I met some extraordinary artists.
And they've become very good friends
and that greatly, greatly, greatly,
enriched my understandingof my life and the world.
(34:49):
St. Chris and (indistinct)
Beth Turr and many, many others.
- Is there a direct relationship there
in that your scientific ideas sometimes
get a spark from their creative ideas ,
or is it less tangible than that
and more just about speaking
to creative people about the world?
- It's less tangible than that.
(35:09):
One of the things thatI would never do is,
do a art and science andhow are they related talk.
When St Claire and I get together,
which isn't as often as I'd like it to be,
we still talk about techniquesand we talk about ideas.
We talk about it as twopeople who are very curious.
(35:32):
- Do you have an artistic side as well?
Are you a creator of art, or music?
- No, I mean, I can playaround, but I used to play jazz,
but I got good enough to play with people
who were really, really good
and then I understood then I would never,
there was no point.
- I wanna go back tothe topic of your books.
As you mentioned, you'vewritten six books.
(35:54):
This is a really huge endeavor
and I wanna ask if you cansay a little bit more on
why you decided to startwriting these books
and what you hope readerswill take away from them?
- There was an opportunityto think through
what I was very puzzled about,
which are the questions of what determines
(36:15):
what the laws and physics are.
How are the laws of physics chosen?
The theory, or the speculationabout string theory
had expressed the view thatthere might be one theory
that was somehow perfect
and was picked out byits mathematical beauty,
or something like that.
And we had then discoveredthrough the 1980s
(36:38):
that that wasn't true.
That there were vastnumbers of string theorists.
So, I went looking for away you could understand
how the laws were chosenby some process analogous
to natural selection and Ihad found an answer to that.
(36:58):
That is several scenariosthat worked exactly
and did make predictions.
And I was confusedabout how that could be,
how could a theory like natural selection,
which is statistical and probabilistic,
let's just say is probabilistic
can produce a deeper understanding
(37:20):
than a more traditional theory,
which just has one version of the laws.
So, that's why I tookon writing that book.
I was given the opportunity,never look back.
I mean each time I've said that's it.
I'm never writing another book again.
It is not easy to write, it'snot easy to write a good book.
(37:42):
I think I have written six good books.
Oh, but some of it is alsothat I like to express myself,
I like to write, because itallowed me to think through
the questions that I was struggling with.
It wasn't a waste of time for me.
- I was gonna ask that,
if writing the books for a non-specialist,
(38:02):
a curious, non-scientific audience,
if that forces you to geta sense of your own work
in a different way.
If it forces you to lookthrough a different lens?
Perhaps not the mathematical lens.
- Yeah, the mathematicsis often a scaffold
to hold you in a position
where you're not actually very stable.
(38:24):
So making, explaining whysomething is a good idea
without mathematics is harder
than explaining it with mathematics.
I mean, everything you doinfluences everything else.
I mean, when you're writing a book
that you want to capturepeople's attention
for two or 300 pages, styleis very, very important.
(38:45):
And we don't teach stylein physics class at school.
- How did you develop yourown sense of voice, or style?
Was it trial and error over time?
- It was good teachers includingsome very good editors.
It's a very differentthan an academic style.
In an academic style,
you tell them what you'regonna tell it to them,
(39:07):
you tell them what you just told them.
It's very linear, it's very structured.
And we can argue about that whether
to what extent that'sa good, or a bad thing.
But you can't do that in abook for general readers.
That kills a book ifyou use that structure
from your academic mind.
- And you've written six books now,
(39:28):
each is on a different topic,
but are there any common themes
that kind of go through all of your books?
- Yes, they're all interested in time.
They're all interested in theconsequences for the future
of how we understand the world now.
And I mean in some sense there,
(39:49):
the one research programlaid out over many pages,
but in the last book "Einstein'sUnfinished Revolution"
I explicitly lay out that research program
and that is my researchprogram and it has always been,
but somehow it stayed in the background.
The other thing is the morepersonal feelings about nature
(40:13):
and society and how the future is going.
Several of the books have epilogues
and what I was going to do,
at some time, I'd liketo just do something
where I read all the epilogues in order.
I won't read the epilogueof the first one,
but there's a quote fromSt Chris (indistinct)
(40:35):
which opens it and Ican do that from memory.
And this is in response to a question
of what is postmodernism?
And he said, "If the purpose of modernism
"was to burn down the old classic house,
"which we've gotten quite bored with,
(40:55):
"then the achievement of postmodernism
"has been just to play around with
"the little char pieces that are left".
Which is a pretty pure thing to be doing
given that winter is coming.
And that's typical.
That's not me.
That's typical St Clair,
but we're after the same thing.
(41:16):
- What would you say you're after?
- I'm after having a scientificunderstanding of nature,
which gives us humanbeings a place in nature
where we can feel at home.
- Is there a a sense of consolationthat you are looking for
where perhaps religions,or moralities or all short,
(41:36):
are you looking for a senseof meaning behind the science?
- Maybe.
I want better than consolation.
Look, what's tragic about life,
which is of course deathand pain and illness
is where it's really notconsolable, it's inconsolable.
But living a happy life, a good life,
(41:58):
in my very minor viewbecause I'm not very wise,
is that there's no answer to that.
The only good thing about themis that more for most of us,
the price we pay for awonderful life comes at the end.
I don't think there's a consolation.
There I'm very influencedby Roberto Mangabeira Unger
(42:20):
who I wrote the fourth book with.
- You mentioned earlierthat you're working on one,
or two more books and you saidyou wouldn't talk about them
unless we asked you to.
So, can I ask you to tellus what you're working on?
- Sure.
One is about what we'velearned, or what I've learned
and it will be a short book
and it might even be apart of the other book.
(42:42):
When you ask me what I'm interested in,
it's not a very interesting story.
But I dropped out of high school
and I was working in theSan Fernando Valley in LA
and as an apprentice sheet metal guy.
And I used to take my lunchesand rather than hang out
with the other guys who Ididn't really understand.
(43:03):
And it was all guys by the way.
I would take a notebook
and write thoughts aboutphysics and science.
And one day I wrote down in that notebook
what I'm interested in,
is first of all what the universe is
and second, what life is in thecontext of the first answer.
And third, what a human being is,
(43:23):
in the context of the first two answer.
And so I thought itwould be nice to write it
at least a section ofthe book that sums up
what I've learned duringmy life in science.
The other book is aboutParkinson's disease,
which I happen to have.
And I've been reflectingon the implications
(43:43):
of a new treatment, whichinvolves putting a chip basically
in your head and becomingwhat the feminist
science fiction writers call a Cyborg.
That is somebody whose brain is half,
or in any right partmachine and part human.
- Can you tell us a bitabout that experience
(44:05):
so far with Parkinson's?
Has this affected howyou go about your life?
- I don't recommend it, if youwanna recreational disease.
- Stay away?
- It's like you have a high school friend
who has become an alcoholic
and he shows up every few months,
thrown out by his girlfriend
(44:25):
and stays on your couch a few nights
and pulls himself together.
And then time goes on andyou wake up one morning
and you are on the couch.
At first it's relatively minor,
it progresses if you're lucky.
And I am in that case slowly.
I'm still more inconveniencedthan anything else by it.
(44:48):
But it grows in your life.
That's not the story Iwant to tell because,
many, many people suffer of course.
Everybody, at least in their family
and I have nothing to say about that.
But I do have maybe some reflections
that I think we ought to think about,
becoming cyborgs,
(45:09):
because I suspect it'sgonna become more common.
- Are you feeling trepidation about this,
or are you optimistic?
Do you know what to think?
- Well, I don't know whatto think of the experience,
but it's not a difficult decision to make.
I mean all you have to do is meet somebody
who's had the implants,
hang out with them for a while
(45:30):
and they'll show you what they'relike with them turned off.
'Cause everybody has an off button.
They hold it over their chipthat controls the networks
in the brain and they click off
and then you see what they would be like
without the implant and it'snot a difficult (indistinct).
(45:50):
- And this book thatyou're thinking of writing
about your experience with Parkinson's,
do you think it would tiein with some of the themes
that came up in otherbooks you have written?
Would there be still someconnective tissue there?
- Maybe.
Let's see.
Certainly it convincesme happiness in life
is more about character thananything else and success.
(46:13):
And so, the most important scientist
who make the most important influences
and changes and progress in science
are not doing that because they're smarter
than other people, or better situated,
or anything like that.
They're more curiousand they're more honest.
- Well, thank you so much Lee.
(46:34):
This has been really apleasure to speak with you.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much.
This is fun.
- Thanks so much Lee.
(upbeat music)
- Thanks for steppinginside The Perimeter.
If you like what you hear,
please help us spread the word.
You can rate, review and subscribe
to conversations at The Perimeter
wherever you get your podcasts.
(46:56):
Every review really helps us a lot
and it helps more scienceenthusiasts find us.
Thank you for being part of the equation.
(gentle music)
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