Reading Notes--Adam Kissel
(for Wayne Booth's course)

Endless stream of nonscientific terms, ideas, leaps, etc. My favorite is the acknowledgment: "I am deeply grateful to ... for urging me to rewrite ... and for seeing how it should be done" (x-xi).

Donne as epigraph, couplet about beauty, dreaming, desiring.

Science has made startling progress, or, in physics, at least until the mid-70s. Now there is debate over the cost of making future progress in physics--the Superconducting Super Collider may lose its funding because of disdain for "big science" or because the 8 billion dollars might be used in some "better" way. Today's physicists are like Faust--but Weinberg admits that today's theories remain tentative and incomplete.

The goals of a "final theory" that would be a satisfying account of "universal truths" are: completeness and consistency. But he really means that all subtheories would be traceable to a first main theory, a First Cause of physical law.

The pre-Socratics sought a fundamental principle (e.g. air, water), but they were thinking qualitatively, but of course a "successful scientific explanation would have to accomplish" a "quantitative understanding" (7). Quantitative tests help determine the truth of qualitative theories. But Weinberg seems even scared of the qualitative nature of existence (10). He shows a quantitative snobbery equal to the Greek qualitative snobbery (which I like better), 11.

Science is about "the discovery of [quantitative] explanations built into the logical structure of nature" [formal causes here, not just efficient causes as he usually mentions] (10).

Weinberg notes a history of scientific complacency about knowing pretty much all there is to know--in opposition to his own dream of a final theory which is a long way off. For example, physicists thought they were about out of work until it was discovered that their theories applied to chemistry, and that new theories and equations were needed.

The final theory will probably be beautifully satisfying, because theories so far have progressed best when "guided by judgments that can only be called aesthetic" (17). And he's not merely aiming for a reductionist efficient-cause science, just a background deepest principle--all the normal problems of life and values and whatnot will remain (18).

In taking science as process, one is treating it like love or art. Science answers a series of deeper and deeper Why questions. It may even peek into teleological questions. Why questions in physics nowadays get bogged down at about the level of quarks. In biology, structure seems to be answered by the combination of survival-evolution and the efficient causes of chemistry, i.e. physics.

Cosmology gets bogged down at about the Big Bang. We seem to have only one universe, with its particular initial conditions--but perhaps most of these conditions can be explained by deeper initial conditions. But here we see a turn to the particular "accidents" (33) of history; the contextualized knowledge that science cannot do much about, for science is about universals (or generals). Practically speaking, science does not treat certain chaotic parts of natural history, nor much of anything about the humanities and social sciences. Determinism is limited by the scope of events it can determine. In one sense determinism never truly accurately shows what happens in a specific case, though in another sense determinism can always be used after-the-fact to show how things 'had to be this way.' Thus the goal is to explain things with reference to both "final laws and historical accidents." Final laws therefore can only provide certain kinds of explanations (37).

"Emergence" is about the new macro-phenomena that arise in aggregates of micro-phenomena [stg here abt formal causes and structure]; e.g. thermodynamics--which becomes "like a mode of reasoning" on top of the background laws (41). Complexity. Order and entropy, 40-41, fascinating but not so well discussed. Practically speaking, it is of no help to look at the deepest micro-phenomena to determine questions about, e.g., life. Larger questions remain both useful and interesting (43). And a subject like consciousness seems nearly beyond the reach of science; to describe its components and hardly to understand or predict consciousness [cf. Rorty's aliens]. Versus the "modern positivists," W. sees a real existence to the basic laws of nature (46)--at least as real as anything else we experience cognition about (46-47).

"Would-be" sciences deserve to be followed up, but by those who have both the time and interest--serious scientists have enough "real" science to worry about already.

Asking a series of Why questions can lead to a hierarchical sense of knowledge and also reductionism. [it need not] Yet to Weinberg, reductionism is "simply true"--the universe is not independent of fundamental laws and principles of physics (54). Reductionism microscopically, searches for the deepest answers. Still, reductionism tends to forget about the unified reality of life, so macroscopic questions, though depending on physics, must seek macroscopic answers. "Different levels of experience call for description and analysis in different terms" (62). But to do any analysis at all, to use analysis to answer a Why question, is already to fly the reductionist flag.

"Theoretical physicists in their most successful work ... are either sages or magicians" (67). Complementarity: you can only know part of the truth (74) if you slice the cake wrong (78); i.e. an electron doesn't have a position/momentum dichotomy but a wave function (78). The Hamiltonian, 76--looks more and more like epicycles to me.

The problem for physics is the interpretation of the equations (73, 77 ff.), "how to think about what we are doing" (77). A good dialogue between so-called "positivist" Tiny Tim and "realist" Scrooge. I think Tiny Tim is winning, though Weinberg favors Scrooge. There's a subtle concordance between determinism and probability that seems to have to do with the observer; i.e. putting theory into practice; i.e. applying the equations to reality. "Of even greater interest ... is the question of whether quantum mechanics is necessarily true" (85).

Quantum mechanics uses linearity, but it seems impossible to change this and still keep quantum mechanics; QM is either all or nothing (86 ff.). It has rigidity (106).

The most important thing is that these TALES are STORIES that show just how unscientific science can be. In other words he seeks "to counteract a widespread point of view that seems ... overly empiricist" (128). There is "an art of science" (131).

Scientists are guided by their muses, particularly the muse of beauty. Our adherence to rigidity comes not out of science but out of "aesthetic judgments and our whole heritage of theory" (107). We judge appropriateness of theory partly as "a matter of taste and experience" (123).

How do you test a theory? Experiments are OK on the whole, but you always get disconfirming experiments (93); the trick is to figure out which disconfirming experiments count (94). And even then you can add "all sorts of corrections" as necessary. In theory too you have to add corrections or renormalizations (e.g. by canceling infinities, 110 ff.). We use an "aesthetic criterion of naturalness ... to help ... weigh conflicting experimental data" (127). Should you distrust the theorist more or the experimenter more? We suffer "a tangled web of theory and experiment" [cf. Quine p. 125] (104).

Stuff to learn: gravity and inertia are about the same (100). The energy of the gravitational field also produces extra gravitational effects (92). "Retrodiction" as explanation of something also observed. "Virtual photons" are just the beginning of a huge extended family of supposed particles which have been "discovered"--but it still looks a lot like epicycles to me, especially since these particles often "appear spontaneously out of empty space" [like imaginary numbers?] during calculations (112). [The response is, who cares about the particles that the wave theory predicts? The wave theory itself is rather simple.]

The beauty of theories are not in their prettiness or their elegance, but mostly in their simplicity and our sense of their inevitability or logical completeness. Beauty also is about the structure of theory; principles of symmetry (the truth of a theory in any reference frame, or invariance, or universality) are important here.

For example, in order for general relativity to work, i.e. be valid in any reference frame, the gravitational field is necessary (145).

"There is no logical formula that establishes a sharp dividing line between a beautiful explanatory theory and a mere list of data, but we know the difference when we see it" (149). Our aesthetic judgment comes into play when we talk about explanation. Explanation should be able to be made clear to all, for "esotericism for its own sake [in science but also literary theory, art, etc.] is just silly" (150). Likewise beware of those mystifiers "who counfound obscurity with profundity" by using impenetrable jargon (168)!

Luckily, interestingly, amazingly, mathematics already has "catalogued all possible symmetries" in group theory (156). And this, even though "mathematicians took as an ideal that their work should be independent of experience and common sense" (160)! {Group theory shows how different frames of reference can be commensurate [vs. Rorty and many postmodernist isolationists]}

The truly fundamental questions yield the truly beautiful answers (165).

The philosophy of physicists is not majestic but grounded in a "rough-and-ready realism, a belief in the objective reality of the ingredients of our scientific theories" (167).

Philosophers have little use to physicists in their work; even philosophers of science often carry notions of "scientific explanation" that are too strict for real scientists (168).