Lake Views: This World and the Universe by Steven Weinberg (PDF)

Description

Just as Henry David Thoreau “traveled a great deal in Concord,” Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg sees much of the world from the window of his study overlooking Lake Austin. In Lake Views Weinberg, considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist alive today, continues the wide-ranging reflections that have also earned him a reputation as, in the words of New York Times reporter James Glanz, “a powerful writer of prose that can illuminate—and sting.”This collection presents Weinberg’s views on topics ranging from problems of cosmology to assorted world issues—military, political, and religious. Even as he moves beyond the bounds of science, each essay reflects his experience as a theoretical physicist. And as in the celebrated Facing Up, the essays express a viewpoint that is rationalist, reductionist, realist, and secular. A new introduction precedes each essay, explaining how it came to be written and bringing it up to date where necessary.As an essayist, Weinberg insists on seeing things as they are, without despair and with good humor. Sure to provoke his readers—postmodern cultural critics, enthusiasts for manned space flight or missile defense, economic conservatives, sociologists of science, anti-Zionists, and religious zealots—this book nonetheless offers the pleasure of a sustained encounter with one of the most interesting scientific minds of our time.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A series of lectures and essays by the famed physicist on subjects from string theory leading into multiverses to his work and opinions on anti-missile systems to his review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. There are two interesting essays in defense of Israel and his mystification of why the British and US “liberal left” (of whom he considers himself) are so hostile to the country. He can only conclude that at its core is anti-Semitism. Where he opines it is with great clarity and critical thought, and where he reports on the latest in particle and high energy physics it is with great regard to the limitations of the lay reader.

⭐A collection of slightly edited talks and articles for NYRB, Physics Today and invited addresses on physics and public affairs by a Nobel Prize winner. Intelligent, perceptive, sound but a little repetitive. I find myself in agreement with his concern that a Russian nuclear response to a mistaken indication of an incoming nuclear attack is the gravest danger facing the US and his views that manned space flight is not the best mission for NASA, that Israel must hold such ground as is necessary to defend itself against the surrounding arabs, that religions are harmful in general and that the Islamic religion is harmful in the extreme, that better education is the primary need of most of the world, and that the challenges and opportunities in modern physics research are very exciting.

⭐Extremely well written pieces on science, history, philosophy, religion, science policy. Great illuminating world views! Much enjoyed reading it. Thank you Dr Weinberg. I’ve become a fan of your views and writing. Will definitely read your other books.

⭐I enjoyed the authors efforts which stem from his vast experience and intelligence but I was disappointed that most of the essays are from the George W Bush era not from Obamas years

⭐An awesome book, written by one of the smartest persons in human history. A tour de force, a weapon against against stupidity, a towering achievement of a unique genius! Have I said I recommend it wholeheartedly? 🙂

⭐It is always a pleasure to read Weinberg, both on the advanced technical aspects of modern physics and on his opinions about the world in general. This fascinating book was very rewarding.

⭐S. Weinebrg is one of those GREAT men, who try to communicate their complicated and sophisticated knowledge to the layman and outsider like me.

⭐Weinberg is one of the smartest people in the world, and this book proves it again. All intelligent people, not only scientists, should read it.

⭐Analyzing power of a brilliant physicist applied not only to physics but to “normal” issues as well.

⭐”I do not think we have to worry that giving up religion will lead to a moral decline,” opines physicist Steven Weinberg on the penultimate page of this collection of essays. “There are plenty of people without religious faith who live exemplary moral lives (as for example, me).”Even if you do say so yourself.Weinberg at once sums up his attitude to the subjects he canvasses and identifies why few (other than the already-persuaded) will find much of interest in this mediocre book: Weinberg believes his arguments go without saying, and only the dim or the mendacious would quarrel with them.It rather makes you wonder which he thinks his target audience is.Essay collections are often lacklustre affairs: disjointed, disconnected, duplicative and lazy: little editorial, let alone authorial, work is needed to compile material that’s already been published, after all.This collection, especially so. The subjects are eclectic, but clumped: the quest for a final theory in elementary physics gets about four airings; why missile defence is a bad idea gets three; why manned space flight is an inferior use of public money than a particle accelerator (now fancy hearing a particle physicist say that!) gets a couple, and the collection is rounded out with a couple on Judaism and Israel, and a couple about the non-existence of God. (Yes, quite: I thought that jarred a bit, too). The collection’s organising principle is no more inspiring than that they were all written in Weinberg’s home study, overlooking a lake. Except, he tells us, it isn’t actually a lake.Weinberg has an unshakeable conviction in the rectitude of his own research programme. This informs his view of the topics he canvasses and affords him licence to gloss over the many objections to his point of view. I had trouble with all that glossing. For example I couldn’t see why it was a good use of tax money to sink 10 billion into a particle accelerator (super cooling 25 kilometres of electro magnets to absolute zero can’t be cheap) in the hope of credentialising a theory which, as stated by Weinberg, is unfalsifiable and plainly in crisis. On the other hand, putting a man on mars would at least give David Bowie an excuse to re-release his back catalogue (not, of course, that he needs one).Lest you think I’m being flippant, I’m not: the standard model of modern particle physics fails to account for gravity unless there are 11 space-time dimensions, seven of which are so tiny as to be undetectable (they need to be this small because there is utterly, butterly, no evidence of any kind for them), and/or a “Multiverse”: an infinite realm of other universes which we cannot (by definition) see or experience (also so required because there’s no evidence for them). Similarly, modern cosmology fails unless vacuum space contains undetected, unseen anti-gravitational force which can explain the fact that the universe is not just expanding, but the expansion is accelerating.These are not trivial problems. They’re barnstormers. Modern physics, that is to say, has many of the hallmarks of a research programme deeply in crisis. I’m not the only one to say this – astrophysicists such as

⭐Peter Woit

⭐and

⭐Lee Smolin

⭐have published compelling books on the topic in the last decade.So it is an odd chair from which to find a practitioner making lofty declarations. Even Weinberg concedes that the outlook for convergence to one final theory is considerably less certain now than it was when he wrote it. Kind of makes you wonder why he didn’t trouble to update (or just omit) the offending article.All this hubris could be forgiven if there were insightful content elsewhere, but there isn’t much. Weinberg includes an essay about the history of military technology (intended as yet another assault on the missile defence issue). This is about as close as Weinberg gets to having anything new to say. But even this (largely concerned with whether the stirrup – which permitted a horseman to charge with a “couched” lance – really was the game-changer its proponents claimed) seems to me to fail badly for selection bias. “Because the stirrup was an exaggerated innovation, ergo so is (in this case) missile defence”.Now Weinberg is persuasive that missile defence is a waste of money (which isn’t exactly hard: you’d need to be an imaginatively paranoid Neo-con to think otherwise), but this argument about stirrups doesn’t help him. For every stirrup there’s a horse, rifle, canon or nuke, which really was a game changer. (There will, of course, be countless “stirrups” which have faded from history’s pages for precisely the same reasons of selection bias, of course: rather like extra dimensions curling tinily into unseen universes).And so it goes on. Many of the essays are cursory, and most are infused with an exasperating certitude. We hear an impassioned plea for the restoration and defence of the Jewish state, book-ended with a vigorous piece of atheism. Again, a dissonance there: This might be naivety on my part but I had understood the Jewish connection to Israel to be a religious one (and as such I have no quarrel with it). But for an atheist? If there’s no God, what is the special attraction of a land where people are lobbing missiles over your back fence all the time?Anyhow – a touchy subject which I only raise to point out the internal dissonance.I didn’t get much from this collection, other than the reinforcement of my hunch that modern particle physics has disappeared down a conceptual rabbit-hole (a worm-hole into another universe perhaps?) from which it is unlikely to re-emerge.In the mean time there are some splendid, challenging and batty books written by leading scientists, which provide enlightenment and unexpected entertainment. This isn’t one of them.Olly Buxton

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