Into the Impossible With Brian Keating Sir Roger Penrose Faith, Fantasy, and the Big Questions in Modern Physics (#324)
A Rash Title
- Sir Roger Penrose's book, Fashion, Faith and Fantasy, was almost titled after his lecture series at Princeton.
- He jokingly mentions experts on two of the three topics were present, making the title a bit rash.
Elegance vs. Validity
- Plato linked the five regular solids to the five elements, sometimes modifying physics to fit the theory.
- Penrose uses this example to demonstrate that elegance alone doesn't guarantee scientific validity.
Initial Impression of String Theory
- Penrose initially found string theory elegant, but its reliance on 25 spatial dimensions was a major drawback.
- He questioned the theory's plausibility, especially the idea of hidden extra dimensions.
Watch the video of Sir Roger's lecture here: https://youtu.be/smUYz9ti_bA
Sir Roger Penrose, the celebrated English mathematician and physicist as well as author of numerous books, including The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics, joined the Clarke Center to share a talk titled "Fashion, Faith and Fantasy and the Big Questions in Modern Physics" based on his book of the same name.
In his book Fashion, Faith and Fantasy and the Big Questions in Modern Physics, Roger Penrose argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential in physics, may be leading today's researchers astray in three of the field's most important areas—string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology.
* **String theory** is a branch of theoretical physics that attempts to unify all of the fundamental forces of nature in a single framework. However, string theory requires the existence of six extra hidden dimensions, which Penrose argues is not physically plausible. He also cautions that the fashionable nature of string theory can cloud our judgment of its plausibility.
* **Quantum mechanics** is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. However, Penrose argues that quantum mechanics is based on a number of unproven assumptions, and that it may not be applicable to all physical systems.
* **Cosmology** is the study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe. Penrose argues that many of the current fantastical ideas about the origins of the universe cannot be true, but that an even wilder reality may lie behind them.
Penrose concludes by arguing that fashion, faith, and fantasy should be replaced by physics: theories which, although they may be completely wrong, can at least be tested in the foreseeable future and discarded if they disagree with experiment or investigated further if not excluded by the results.
The book has been praised by some physicists for its insights into the current state of physics, while others have criticized it for its negative tone and its lack of constructive proposals.
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