Next Monday, November 17th at 7pm, I’ll be at the Harvard Bookstore with particle physicist and author Daniel Whiteson. Professor Whiteson and his co-author Andy Warner have a nice new book, for the general science-aware reader, exploring an age-old and unanswered question: how universal is the knowledge and understanding that we call “physics”? How much of modern physics is actually telling us about the universe, and how much of it is created by, or an accident of, the humans who have helped bring it about?
For instance, if we started all over again and reran history from scratch, would the physics (and science more generally) of this re-run culture look much like our own, or might it turn out very differently? If another culture on Earth had had time to develop highly mature science (or something like it) in its own direction, independent of Western Europe’s influence, how different might that science be? (Indeed, would our word “science” even be translatable into their worldview?) Or if we encountered aliens with far greater understanding of the universe than we have, would we be able to recognize, parse, grok, appreciate, comprehend, and/or otherwise make sense of their notions of scientific knowledge?
Whiteson and his co-author, wanting to write a popular book rather than a scholarly one, and desiring nevertheless to take on these serious and challenging intellectual questions, have set their focus mostly on the aliens, accompanied by amusing cartoons and a generous helping of dad jokes (hey, some dad jokes are actually very funny.) They’re looking for a broad audience, and hopefully they will get it. But don’t let the light-hearted title (“Do Aliens Speak Physics?“) or the charmingly goofy cover fool you: this book might well make you laugh, but I guarantee it will make you think. Whether you’re just curious about science or you’ve been doing science yourself for years, I suspect that, within the vast array of problems and issues that are raised in this broad-minded book, there will be some you’ve never thought of.
Among scientists and philosophers, there are some who believe that any aliens with the capacity to reach the Earth will obviously “speak physics” — that math and physics float above contingencies of culture and species, and will easily be translated from any intelligent creature to any other. But are they perhaps flying too high? It’s clear that Whiteson and Warner are aiming to poke some holes — lots of holes —- in their hot-air balloon, and to do so in a way that a wide variety of readers can appreciate and enjoy.
I tend to agree with Whiteson on a lot of these issues, but that won’t stop me from asking him some tough questions. You can ask him some tough questions too, if you like — just come to the Harvard Bookstore at 7:00 on Monday and join the conversation!
3 Responses
Shame there is no kindle version yet.
It would be interesting to contemplate how differently the science of physics would evolve for a civilization that had no experience with gravity. Suppose instead that these imaginary aliens emerged and developed in a huge rotating cylinder, where a phenomenon very much like gravity is caused by stationary rotation for many thousands or millions of years. Such Rotonians, as we may call them, may, for example, learn to always trust the readings of accelerometers. We can imagine that they develop an advanced technology enabling them to put themselves in stasis and travel to one of the distant points of light. If they are triggered to reawaken by proximity to a body such as Earth, and they suddenly discover this gargantuan orb accelerating straight toward them, would their first guess not be that the experience was caused by an enormous rocket on the body’s far side? When they navigate a soft landing and send an expedition to discover that there is no far-side rocket, would not their trust in accelerometers motivate the hypothesis that matter is an inexhaustible source of perpetual propulsion? They deign to test this hypothesis by building a Small Low-Energy Non-Collider. Galileo proposed such a test 393 years ago, but Earthians have not yet gotten around to doing it.
Welcome back, professor!