My enjoyment of Lee Smolin’s writing led me (The Life of the Cosmos, Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, and now The Trouble with Physics), eventually, to a couple of apparently notorious physics blogs (http://motls.blogspot.com/; http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/). These I have now spent much time perusing in horrified fascination. Here are a couple of layman’s impressions. (By the way, I use the term “layman” accurately, but, all things considered, rather proudly, and, um, not totally devoid of its religious connotations….)

After long, long observation, I have concluded that people are goofy, and now I know that physicists are too. But levels of humanity notwithstanding, I am left in shocked awe, that incredibly smart scientists can be, so…publicly, so…neither smart nor scientific. I am aware that, by some definition—and, perhaps, avocation—I am a “crackpot”, but then again, so, seemingly, is nearly everyone, so I'm in good company, there. Well. It is true that I cannot follow or understand many of the fine theological arguments, particularly regarding the mathematics presumably associated with how the world works at the reductionistic bottom of things. Yet, stridently proclaimed Gnosis of that microcosm seems, in some cases, to preclude useful knowledge of how the world works at higher, more corporate levels of understanding.

Skepticism and honest intellectual dissent are good, and should be encouraged, required, and even rewarded in science—as in any other human endeavor, save, perhaps, romance and barroom pugilism. I am not personally qualified to assess the technical correctness of string theory; I have not the ear to judge whether its ring is true or otherwise. Still, I am dismayed and annoyed that many of its practitioners and adherents seem to have given up on championing the theory, or, rather, meta-theory, on scientific grounds, and instead have forced it into a socio-religious framework, replete with cultish hero-worship, priestly elitism, arguments from dominance, fervor, wealth, and arrogance, and quasi-theological disputation along with multiple layers of esoteric rhetorical assumptions. (Just how many strings can vibrate on the head of a nine-dimensional pin, anyway?) I guess if you can’t beat the heretics on intellectual grounds, then carpe jugulum. But even the Catholic Church requires a devil’s advocate.

Distasteful, unworthy, and unnecessary it all is—and, perhaps, unfair: Like with a jousting match organized by the Black Knight’s patron, would-be contributors are kept out of the tournament, not because they cannot compete, but because they do not have the requisite pomp, the finery, and, especially, the retinue and courtly backing. And even if they do enter the fray, it might be rigged.

As I say, horrible. Goofy. Fascinating. There is surely some history being made here, but exactly what its eventual judgments will be is interesting to speculate about.