Not Even Wrong

selfAdjoint · Mar24-04, 04:16 PM

Peter Woit has a blog! . Much good stuff, not too hard on string theory, plus check out his links.

**marcus** · Mar24-04, 04:23 PM

Originally posted by selfAdjoint
Peter Woit has a blog! . Much good stuff, not too hard on string theory, plus check out his links.

Fascinating. Very interested by his summary of the points in
David Gross talk.

will check out his links after lunch.

selfAdjoint · Mar24-04, 04:52 PM

Note that in his post "The Holy Grail of Physics" Woit mentions Jackiw. Jackiw has a retrospective paper, http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0403109 for the 50th anniversay of Yang-Mills, in which he discusses the helicity puzzles that Woit speaks of.

**marcus** · Mar24-04, 07:53 PM

Woit's March 19, 2004 blog was especially informative. As senior faculty at Columbia, in mathematical physics---the guy teaching grad students their QFT and Representation Theory---his judgements on the past 20 years progress in Particle Physics are especially crisp and authoritative.

--------Woit's comment on David Gross talk----
Gross's talk contained the usual tendentious pro-string theory points, here's a few of them with commentary:

1. " String theory is in a period like that of 1913-1925, it's like the Bohr model, we're waiting for the analog of Heisenberg's or Schrodinger's breakthroughs"

The problem with this is that the Bohr model was actually predictive, for instance it predicted a lot about atomic spectra that could be experimentally checked. There clearly was something right about the Bohr model, there is no good evidence there is something right about string theory.
...
...
4. "String theory is a consistent, finite quantum theory of gravity"

Simply not true. Peturbative string theory is a divergent expansion, non-perturbative definitions don't work for four large flat dimensions, rest small.

5. "String theory inspired brane-world scenarios, although I don't really believe these"

Why would you think that an argument in a theory's favor was that it inspired some clearly wrong models that you don't believe and that don't predict anything?

--------end quote-------

**jeff** · Mar24-04, 08:15 PM

Originally posted by marcus
As senior faculty at Columbia...his judgements on the past 20 years progress in Particle Physics are especially crisp and authoritative.

Peter woit is just an instructor, not a professor. If you search the arXiv's, you'll find two papers by him, with one of them being a five page polemic on string theory in the subject class of 'physics and society' and with not a single reference. If you want to learn about string theory, this isn't the place to start.

**marcus** · Mar24-04, 08:15 PM

So we have on good authority that string theory is not
a viable quantum theory of gravity.

Since it has been hugely hyped as exactly that, it's time for major debunking.

----at the end of Woit's March 19 report on Gross talk------

...I noticed that two string theory postdocs I know were in the audience. They've both told me that they think the subject is at a point of crisis and they are thinking of quitting. I don't think anything Gross said was likely to encourage them to continue.
-----------end quote---------

**marcus** · Mar24-04, 08:21 PM

I may be mistaken about Woit's standing in the math and physics departments at Columbia. I am remembering from some months back when I happened to visit his website and saw the graduate level courses he was teaching.

Would be glad for fuller information. In which department? Mathematics or Physics?

Answered my own question!
The math department at Columbia has this link
http://www.math.columbia.edu/people/faculty.phtml

It shows that Peter Woit got his PhD in 1985 from Princeton.

So he was probably born around 1960 and must be in his Forties.

In some sense senior---I would guess tenured faculty. No doubt we will learn more.

**Haelfix** · Mar24-04, 09:27 PM

Woit is a smart guy, I've met him before. He's echoing publically what we often hear in private conversations with mathematicians, who work on physics.

Theres a huge literature that is often overlooked by physicists, (aside from a select few like Witten) that deals with QFT/string theory etc using modern approaches and topics that are just recently becoming rigorous in mathematics.

Advances in K theory, infinite dimensional lie groups, etc etc

The fact of the matter is, its perfectly normal to expect skepticism from mathematicians, since the tools to treat String theory in a manner that makes sense to them doesn't exist yet. Its no coincidence physicists say its a 21st century theory that happened to be stumbled upon in the 20th century.

AFAICS, Woit's main beef is that the lvl of funding is so lopsided and other lines of inquiry seem to be supressed monetarily in favor of the orthodoxy.

**marcus** · Mar24-04, 09:29 PM

Originally posted by jeff
Peter woit is just an instructor, not a professor. If you search the arXiv's, you'll find two papers by him, with one of them being a five page polemic on string theory in the subject class of 'physics and society' and with not a single reference. If you want to learn about string theory, this isn't the place to start.

have to see about whether a professor or instructor
instructor was usually a title for young faculty
not yet on tenure track. I suspect that Columbia math dept
has no instructors on the faculty---full-time positions
would most likely be all assoc. prof. or asst. prof. or full professor. But you could be right! No doubt we will see in time.

**marcus** · Mar24-04, 09:34 PM

Originally posted by Haelfix
Woit is a smart guy, I've met him before...

Haelfix do you happen to know if Woit has made professor.
We have someone here saying he is "just an instructor" which
would seem bizarre given the other signs of senior faculty standing.

**rick1138** · Mar24-04, 09:59 PM

Here is a link to Gross's talk:

http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/mt01teach/gross/

**lethe** · Mar25-04, 01:18 AM

Originally posted by marcus
Haelfix do you happen to know if Woit has made professor.
We have someone here saying he is "just an instructor" which
would seem bizarre given the other signs of senior faculty standing.

which "other signs" were you talking about? the fact that he teaches classes? i know lots of people who teach, and yet are not professors.

anyway, you can see from the math department website that he is a "Director of Instruction", and not a Professor (associate or otherwise)

i guess you just chose not to see that when you were looking at it.

**Haelfix** · Mar25-04, 09:17 AM

No clue what position he holds, other than that he works at Columbia, not that it matters.

I do know that he knows what hes talking about w.r.t to field theory. But I don't think he is an expert on String theory, there are others at Columbia that know a lot more about that sort of stuff. Phong, Greene et al.

Typically mathematicians are introduced to String theory, when a physicist wanders over to their department when they're confused about something and nead expertise in some archaic form. The mathematician then has the distinct horror of trying to figure out a problem, without even knowing where its coming from.

The conversation will go something like
Mathematician 'whats that measure'
Physicist 'its undefined'
Mathematician 'what?!?'
Physicist 'ignore it, just tell me what Hodge theory says about this right here'
...

I exagerate, but thats often how things can go. The physicist will go off pleased, and the math guy left wondering about their sanity.

selfAdjoint · Mar25-04, 10:46 AM

Originally posted by marcus
have to see about whether a professor or instructor
instructor was usually a title for young faculty
not yet on tenure track. I suspect that Columbia math dept
has no instructors on the faculty---full-time positions
would most likely be all assoc. prof. or asst. prof. or full professor. But you could be right! No doubt we will see in time.

The university site has him as "Director of Instruction", which is surely not the same as "Instructor"? And he is the only individual included on that site who is not listed as some kind of Professor.

**marcus** · Mar25-04, 10:52 AM

not to confuse Director of Instr (admin position some places comparable to Associate Dean) with Instructor (pre-tenure-track grade for young hires) for example
Greg Miller at U Washington
got his Phd in 1983
became Assistant Professor 1984
Associate Professor 1988
Professor 1995
made Director of Instruction 1998

be patient, more will probably come out about Woit's standing
he is a very interesting person
he watches theoretical physics closely
and at Columbia he teaches the graduate level courses in
Lie Groups and Representations
Quantum Field Theory
he has ideas about what direction EXPERIMENTAL hep should take
he is not exactly Haelfix's model of a periferal mathematician
shaking his head in disbelief at the vagaries of physicists
he strikes me more as a centrally knowledgeable type of math/physicist.

in any case I do not accept the dismissive estimate that Woit is "just an instructor" and I am happy to wait and learn more about this very interesting person

I do not know that he is a professor or not a professor and I am not convinced that this matters, but he seems senior to me---resepected, with some adminstrative function in the department---in his 40s---very smart----with a sense of history and a complex perspective

**marcus** · Mar25-04, 11:11 AM

Originally posted by Haelfix
Woit is a smart guy, I've met him before.
...
AFAICS, Woit's main beef is that the lvl of funding is so lopsided and other lines of inquiry seem to be supressed monetarily in favor of the orthodoxy.

Haelfix I really like your sketch of the encounter between the mathematician and physicist. It is majorly true to life.
But I think Woit's beef is more interesting than that.

An important part of it is that the mathematics of string theory is not very interesting (or forward-looking) mathematics
and he points to more interesting directions in math/physics
where theoreticians could be going if they were not so
bogged in string

he is highly critical of the bromide about "a bit of 21st century that happened to plop down prematurely in the 20th century" or whatever Witten's inspired prophesy was

You have got me interested now. So I will go back to Woit's essay and see better what his beef is
I know it is about more than lopsided money, but I want to be refreshed as to details.