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Some people talk as if they think the social statistics of science don't matter, but it's hard for me to believe they really think that. Stats on public perceptions and interest in science, and also stats on research publication, citations, faculty hiring etc., must sometimes be important to understanding what's going on.
In any case I for one, and maybe others as well, like to follow a few easy-to-keep-track-of stats relevant to quantum gravity. The stats of a certain kind of ballgame---or, if you prefer a more academic term, sociology of science.
At the moment there are TWO popular books on the market that clearly support the vision and goal of a background independent quantum physics, namely Lee Smolin's and Frank Wilczek's. Here I mean background independence in the sense that non-string QG people use the term---no fixed geometric background used in constructing the theory. Space, instead of serving as a static stage for other things to move in, is itself dynamic: a major actor in the play. Dynamic geometry might indeed turn out to be the only actor, if matter fields arise as various types of geometrical disturbance.
So I am going to watch how the Wilczek book does in the popular science book market, compared to a convenient benchmark that I've already used some to track the Smolin book.
We'll see what happens.
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There are also some other relevant stats. But for the moment I'll focus on this. It's a rough gauge of public interest in and acceptance of a kind of vision that the author is trying to get across. Physics has, up til now, been almost entirely formulated on fixed geometric backgrounds, so in both cases we have an author trying to reach a wide readership with a comparatively new vision of physics. The amazon book stats will give us an idea of how well it's getting across.
In any case I for one, and maybe others as well, like to follow a few easy-to-keep-track-of stats relevant to quantum gravity. The stats of a certain kind of ballgame---or, if you prefer a more academic term, sociology of science.
At the moment there are TWO popular books on the market that clearly support the vision and goal of a background independent quantum physics, namely Lee Smolin's and Frank Wilczek's. Here I mean background independence in the sense that non-string QG people use the term---no fixed geometric background used in constructing the theory. Space, instead of serving as a static stage for other things to move in, is itself dynamic: a major actor in the play. Dynamic geometry might indeed turn out to be the only actor, if matter fields arise as various types of geometrical disturbance.
So I am going to watch how the Wilczek book does in the popular science book market, compared to a convenient benchmark that I've already used some to track the Smolin book.
We'll see what happens.
=============
There are also some other relevant stats. But for the moment I'll focus on this. It's a rough gauge of public interest in and acceptance of a kind of vision that the author is trying to get across. Physics has, up til now, been almost entirely formulated on fixed geometric backgrounds, so in both cases we have an author trying to reach a wide readership with a comparatively new vision of physics. The amazon book stats will give us an idea of how well it's getting across.
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