New Einsteins need positive environment, independent spirit

Smolin replies: My piece in Physics Today was a brief summary of arguments made in my new book, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). Carlos Handy and Susan Ramlo echo many communications I have received in response. They tell stories of idealistic and creative young people burning with energy to contribute to physics who collide with a cynical and unsympathetic atmosphere when they enter graduate school. Their comments affirm the message of my essay and book, which is that physics will progress faster if we make sure to hedge our investments in risky foundational areas, and support a diverse range of ideas, research styles, and approaches. According to sociologist Richard Florida’s work, a strong measurable correlation exists between economic growth and tolerance, which explains why cities like San Francisco and Toronto are prospering. My argument is an application of his insight to the physics profession.

Thus, although I agree with the thrust of Amin Dharamsi’s remarks, I differ with him on attributing Albert Einstein’s success to his “amazing intuition” alone. Einstein contributed because he held two convictions about nature that turned out to be right: the relativity of inertial frames and atomism. Those were not consensus views at the time, so to pursue them he had to risk his career; and for that he needed a strong dose of intellectual independence and courage. Had he been as talented and intuitive but less independent, he might have been able to contribute to the development of existing ideas, following the great physicists of the time such as Max Planck and Hendrik Lorentz. But then he might not be remembered today and physics would be poorer for it.

On the other hand, Planck and Lorentz are to be admired because even if they were on the wrong side of the key issues, they recognized the importance of Einstein’s work and encouraged and supported his career. They cared more for science than for their own legacies and research programs, so they put their support behind the young rebel whose work, it turned out, ended their own research programs. This shows that the contributions of Einstein, Lorentz, and Planck were due as much to their characters as to their cognitive and computational skills.

This illustrates why I disagree with Lev Landau’s simplistic but common notion, raised by Asoke Mitra, that physicists can be ranked in a one-dimensional hierarchy. My view, supported by everything I have experienced in science, is that this status game is both wrong and destructive to the progress of science because the progress of physics requires a diversity of talents, approaches, and styles.

Let me offer a better metaphor than the schoolyard for thinking about how physicists differ—a metaphor suggested to me by Eric Weinstein. We can think of physicists as mountain climbers, with the new theory we are looking for as a high peak in the distance. Unfortunately, the landscape is foggy and we climbers can only see far enough to tell which direction is up from where we are. To discover the peak requires different kinds of climbers. At some points we need good technical climbers. Put them on any slope and they will make it quickly to the nearest hilltop. Many of them also like to climb in groups, so that they have an audience to whom they can show off their skills. The problem is that once they get to the top, they get stuck. To find other hills, which may lead to the real summit, we need climbers whose styles are more adventurous and individualistic, who prefer to leave the crowded lower peaks and strike off across perilous ridges. We also need a few loners who prefer to spend their time fording rivers and crossing valleys, discovering new mountains.

Einstein may have been the best valley crosser we’ve ever had; almost everything he did either sparked a revolution or was an attempt to do so. But contemporaries reported that many people were better at the technicalities. Landau worked in a different period, when the revolution was considered over and what was admired was great speed and technical climbing skills, based on established frameworks. Could Einstein have competed with Landau at what Landau did best? The evidence is that Einstein was not even good at working out the implications of his own theory of general relativity; most of the important exact solutions, which require only elementary methods from differential equations to discover, were quickly found by others.

So Mitra misunderstands my proposal. It is not to mass-produce prodigies. It is to find and support more valley crossers, who have trouble making good careers in an atmosphere that promotes great technical climbing skills as indicative of a good scientist. This does not require a big change in policy, as not many people qualify as valley crossers. What is needed is only that some agencies and foundations learn to act as venture capitalists, to give those who take the big risks needed to solve the big problems a chance to do their work.