Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Lilly Pond Universe
Robert Laughlin,winner of the Nobel prize in physics, is publishing an edgy little book called A Different Universe. The book takes on prominent theoreticians like Columbia's astrophysics star Brian Greene, cosmologist David Schramm of the University of Chicago and many others. Laughlin's beef with the scientists is their belief that all fundamental principles of science have been already discovered and that we just need to "fill in the details." He fumes that this view is "completely wrong and completely below the belt."
Laughlin argues that it's more important to look at how things are organized than what they are made of. "A field of flowers rendered by Renoir or Monet strikes us as interesting because it is a perfect whole while the daubs of paint from which it is constructed are randomly shaped and imperfect," he says. "The imperfection of the individual strokes tells us that the essence of the painting is in its organization."
He points out that this hierarchy exists everywhere in nature - just look at at atoms and how they can be broken down. He says that we don't need to chase emphemeral particles in supercolliders or understand the details of the string theory to make sense of the world. He posits that hierarchical organization "renders the most fundamental laws, whatever they are, irrelevant and protects us from being tyrannized by them," he says. "It's the reason we can live without understanding the ultimate secrets of the universe."
Laughlin argues that it's more important to look at how things are organized than what they are made of. "A field of flowers rendered by Renoir or Monet strikes us as interesting because it is a perfect whole while the daubs of paint from which it is constructed are randomly shaped and imperfect," he says. "The imperfection of the individual strokes tells us that the essence of the painting is in its organization."
He points out that this hierarchy exists everywhere in nature - just look at at atoms and how they can be broken down. He says that we don't need to chase emphemeral particles in supercolliders or understand the details of the string theory to make sense of the world. He posits that hierarchical organization "renders the most fundamental laws, whatever they are, irrelevant and protects us from being tyrannized by them," he says. "It's the reason we can live without understanding the ultimate secrets of the universe."
