Last day at Cambridge Infinities Conference

Today was the third and last day of the ‘Infinities and Cosmology’ conference at Cambridge (there is also a workshop tomorrow, see website). Yesterday saw quite a heavy schedule, with part II of George Ellis’s ‘Infinites of Age and Size Including Global Topological Issues’, part II of Anthony Aguirre’s ‘Infinite and Finite State Spaces’ and part II of Michael Douglas’s ‘Can We Test the String Theory Landscape?’ (see previous post for an outline of these topics). We also had a fairly technical talk on ‘Singularities and Cosmic Censorship in General Relativity’ by the Cambridge mathematician Mihalis Dafermos: nuts-and-bolts talks like these are great for non-relativists like me because you get to see the mathematical tools used in GR research.

The logo for the Infinities in Cosmology conference; an artist’s impression of small universes

Today saw part II of Mihalis’s talk and the lecture ‘Infinite Computations and Spacetime’ by Mark Hogarth, a fascinating exploration of new methods of computation by exploiting relativistic spacetime . I won’t attempt to summarize either, but the lectures should soon be available on the conference website.

For me, the highlight of the day was the talk ‘At Home and At Sea in an Infinite Universe: Newtonian and Machian Theories of Motion’ by Simon Saunders,  the well-known Oxford physicist and philosopher of physics. This was a superb discussion of Newton’s cosmology, in particular the paradox of gravitational instability in the Newtonian universe of infinite size and absolute, fixed space. Did Newton realize that our solar system might possess a net acceleration, or did he assume that external gravitational forces somehow cancel out? Drawing on material from Newton’s Principia and his ‘System of the World’,  Professor Saunders argued that Newton assumed the latter, though whether he attributed such a delicate cosmic balancing act to divine intervention or to unknown forces is not clear. (The possibility of a theological argument is not so fanciful as this work was the first mathematical attempt to try to describe the universe as a whole). Later, Professor Saunders suggested that it is likely Newton declined to spend too much time on the question simply because it was untestable.

Newton’s famous Principia

There were many other interesting points in this fascinating lecture. Viewing the slides shown from Newton’s Principia, I was struck by the equivalence drawn again and again between bodies at rest and in uniform motion. This anticipates Einstein’s special theory of relativity and is again slightly in conflict with Newton’s assumption of a fixed, absolute space, as Simon pointed out. All this hints at a possible difference in Newton’s philosophy towards the universe at large versus motion on local scales – ironic as he was the first scientist to unite terrestrial and celestial motion in a single framework. I won’t comment further, but the lecture left one eager to read Simon’s recent paper on the subject.

All in all, a superb conference. It was interesting that, even with such distinguished speakers, moderators observed time limits strictly in order to allow plenty of time for questions and comments after the talks. In some ways, this was the best part; it’s not often one gets to hear to-and-fro arguments between scientists like John Barrow, George Ellis, Julian Babour and Simon Saunders, in the lecture theatre and over coffee.

Speaking of coffee, one of the best aspects of the conference was the venue. Cambridge’s Department of Applied and Theoretical Physics forms part of its Centre for Mathematical Sciences and is housed in a lovely modern open-plan building, with the smell of coffee and scones wafting throughout the atrium. What other mathematics institute can boast such a setup?  Not DIAS, I’m afraid. Indeed, I’m writing this post in the quiet atrium/canteen (no annoying background music – that wouldn’t be tolerated here). However, I’ve just realised that we are now finished for the day, so I’m off to do some sight-seeing at last.

The main atrium in the Center for Mathematical Sciences is one big coffee shop, perfect for group discussions of physics, philosophy and mathematics

The Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics forms part of the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at Cambridge

VM Slipher and the expanding universe

In an earlier post, I mentioned an upcoming  conference in Arizona to celebrate the pioneering work of the American astronomer Vesto Slipher. As mentioned previously, 2012 marks the centenary of Slipher’s observation that light from the Andromeda nebula was Doppler shifted, a finding he interpreted as evidence of a radial velocity for the nebula. By 1917, he had established that the light from many of the distant nebulae is redshifted, i.e. shifted to lower frequency than normal. This was the first  indication that the most distant objects in the sky are moving away at significant speed, and it was an important step on the way to the discovery of the expanding universe.

Vesto Melvin Slipher (1875-1969)

The conference turned out to be very informative and enjoyable, with lots of interesting presentations from astronomers, historians and science writers. It’s hard to pick out particular talks from such a great lineup, but three highlights for me were Einstein, Eddington and the 1919 Eclipse Expedition by Peter Coles, Georges Lemaitre: A Personal Profile by John Farrell and Slipher’s redshifts as support for de Sitter’s universe? by Harry Nussbaumer. The latter compared the importance of the contributions of Slipher, Hubble, Einstein, De Sitter, Friedmann and Lemaitre (to mention but a few) and was a focal point for the conference. My own talk ‘Who discovered the expanding universe? – an open bus tour’ was quite similar to Harry’s , with some philosophy of science thrown in, while Micheal Way’s talk Dismantling Hubble’s Legacy? also touched on similar ground.  However, there was little danger of overlap since viewpoints and conclusions drawn from the material varied quite widely! You can see the conference program here.

A slide from Peter Cole’s talk on the Eddington eclipse experiment

A slide from John Farrell’s talk showing a postcard from Lemaitre to Slipher, announcing the former’s visit to the Lowell observatory

Harr Nussbaumer, author of ‘The Discovery of the Expanding Universe’,  in action

Front slide of my own presentation

The best aspect of the conference was the question and answer session after each talk. There was quite a divergence of opinion amongst the delegates concerning the relative importance of the various scientists in the story, which made for great discussions (though I suspect that much of the argument arises from differing views concerning the role of the theoretician vs the role of the experimentalist). You can see a list of speakers and abstracts for the talks here and the slides for my own talk are here.

There was plenty of material here for the relativist; indeed, quite a bit of discussion concerned the relative contributions of Friedmann and Lemaitre (told you it was a good conference). In particular, the Israeli mathematician Ari Belenkiy gave a defence of Friedmann’s work in his talk Alexander Friedmann and the Origin of Modern Cosmology, pointing out that the common assertion that Friedmann took no interest in practical matters is simply untrue, given his work in meteorology, and that the relevant astronomical data was not widely available to Europeans at the time. I must admit I share Ari’s view to some extent; I’m always somewhat in awe of a theoretician who describes all possible solutions to a problem (in this case the universe), as opposed to one solution that seems to chime with experiments of the day.

Title slide of Ari’s talk on Friedmann

The conference also included a trip to the Lowell observatory, including a view of the spectrograph used by Slipher for his groundbreaking measurements and a peep through the famous 24-inch Clark telescope which remains in operation to this day. We were also treated to a few scenes from Dava Sobel’s upcoming play based on her book on Copernicus, read by Dava herself and the eminent Harvard science historian Owen Gingerich.

The famous spectograph, perfectly preserved

Slipher’s telescope remains in use today

Dava Sobel and Professor Owen Gingerich reading from her new play at the Lowell observatory

All in all, a superb conference, definitely worth the long trip (Dublin-Chicago-Phoenix-Flagstaff). Earlier in the week, I gave a longer version of my talk at the BEYOND centre at Arizona State University in Phoenix; I was afraid some of the theoreticians in Larry Krauss’s  group might find it a bit equation-free, but they seemed to enjoy it. Larry and Paul Davies have a fantastic operation going on at the BEYOND centre, but I have to say the ambience and surroundings  at Flagstaff are probably more suitable for a European – much nicer weather!

Many thanks to Ari Belenkiy for the photographs. You can find more descriptions of the conference on John Farrell’s Forbes blog, and on Peter Coles’s  In The Dark blog.

Astronomy and cosmology at Birr Castle

Yesterday, I travelled to historic Birr Castle in the centre of Ireland in order to catch the end of the annual meeting of the Astronomical Science Group of Ireland. Birr Castle is a great setting for an astronomy meeting -  not only is it a beautiful castle with fantastic grounds, it is also an important landmark in the history of astronomy. The castle was the home of the famous Leviathan, a reflecting telescope that was the largest instrument of its kind in the world for many years. The telescope was built in the 1840s by Lord Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, and featured  a 72-inch mirror, a marvel of engineering at the time.  He made many important discoveries with the instrument, not least the first observation of the spiral structure of some of the distant nebulae and the detection of stars within the nebulae. Indeed, the Earl was one of the first to propose that the nebulae were entire galaxies distinct from our own, a hypothesis that was not definitely established until Hubble’s measurements with the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mt Wilson in California.

Birr Castle in Co.Offaly

The Leviathan telescope at Birr castle

There were a great many interesting talks over the two days of the meeting (see program here), but I was there to catch ‘The Search for Polarization Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background’ by Creidhe O’Sullivan of NUI Maynooth. Creidhe started with a basic overview of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), explaining its importance as evidence in support of the big bang model and describing the measurements of temperature fluctuations in the radiation by the COBE and WMAP satellites. (The CMB is the primordial radiation left over from the time that atoms first began to form. Cosmologists and astronomers spend a great deal of time studying the tiny temperature fluctuations imprinted in the CMB, as this gives information on the density and geometry of the early universe, see the Cosmology 101 section of this blog.)

Creidhe then moved on to explain the study of polarization in the background radiation. The CMB radiation is expected to be polarized because it comprises light that has been scattered by many particles; when light is scattered, it gets polarized into different planes of vibration. (Polaroid sunglasses operate on the same principle; they cut down on light by allowing only light polarised in one plane to pass through). Hence cosmologists search for fluctuations in polarization as well as temperature in the CMB, although the polarization fluctuations are much smaller. Mathematically speaking, the polarization is divided into two modes: electric (E –mode) and magnetic (B-mode) polarisation. E-modes have been detected since 2003; the analysis of these modes has become a major area of research in cosmology. Creidhe gave a superb overview of the instruments used to analyse the E- modes, including the work of her own group with the QuaD experiment at the South Pole.

The QUaD experiment at the South Pole

She finished the talk by explaining that the next big challenge in cosmology is the detection of B–mode polarization in the background radiation. B-modes present a great challenge as they are yet more difficult to detect. The great hope here is that the PlANCK satellite telescope, with its improved resolution. Just as the COBE satellite results were a watershed in our view of the early universe, the resolution of B-mode polarization in the CMB by PLANCK would give yet more support for the big bang model and cosmic inflation, and even offer evidence for the existence of gravity waves.

The Planck satellite telescope

That is not to say terrestrial experiments will not have their place. After Creidhe’s talk, another member of the Maynooth group, Stephen Scully, gave a brief overview of the team’s work on the QUBIC experiment. This is a new type of the bolometric interferometer that will be used in the next generation of terrestrial measurements at the South Pole.

All in all, a most informative afternoon. After the talks, we were shown the site in the castle grounds where a new radiotelescope is to be situated. This will form the Irish node of the international LOFAR astronomy project, bringing Birr castle up to date with modern astronomy – more on this in the next post.

Hamilton Walk and Maths Week in Ireland

October 16th is a special day for mathematics and physics in Ireland. On this day, we commemorate the discovery of quaternions by William Rowan Hamilton, the great Irish mathematician and astronomer. Essentially, his insight was to postulate three distinct roots for the number -1, thus generalising complex numbers to four dimensions. It can be said that this discovery marks the birth of modern algebra, as quarternions opened the door to non-commutable algebra. Quaternions have found great application in modern technology, notably in compter algorithims for animation in films and computer games.

William Rowan Hamilton made a great many other contributions to mathematics and physics. For example, his formulation of a mathematical operator for the energy of a body – the Hamiltonian -  is a vital tool in quantum mechanics, the mathematical description of the quantum world. Open any modern textbook on quantum physics and you will encounter the word ‘Hamiltionian’ on almost every page.

As regards quaternions, we know exactly when Hamilton had his Eureka moment. According to his own writing, inspiration struck on the 16th october in 1843,  as he was walking with his wife from Dunsink Observatory in County Dublin (where he was Astronomer Royal) along the Royal Canal towards the city centre, in order to attend a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy, of which he was President.  He was so pleased with the breakthrough that he used his penknife to carve the new equation onto Broom bridge as they passed. The carving no longer exists but the bridge does, and the occasion is celebrated with a plaque. Every year, mathematicians and friends of mathematics congregate at Dunsink Observatory at 3pm and re-enact Hamilton’s famous walk along the canal to the bridge.

  

William Rowan Hamilton; the plaque displays the famous equation i² = j² = k² = ijk = -1

This year, October 16th fell on a Sunday, so mathematicians and the general public arrived from far and near. The day started in Dunsink Observatory, with a brief description of Hamilton’s life and work by Fiacre O Cairbre, event organiser and lecturer in mathematics at NUI Maynooth. There followed a lovely walk along the canal in perfect weather conditions, all the way to Broom bridge to view the plaque. The outing finished with a short description of Hamilton’s breakthrough by another Maynooth mathematician, Anthony O’ Farrell, and a chorus of ‘Happy birthday, quaternions’ by all present. I think it’s great to remember our scientific heros like this;  it’s curious that even our very best scientists and mathematicians receive far less public attention that writers and musicians.

 

Dunsink Observatory and Broom Bridge on the Royal Canal

Each year, the Hamilton Walk is soon followed by a prestigious lecture on mathematics presented by the Royal Irish Academy and The Irish Times. Previous speakers have included Andrew Wiles, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gellman and Lisa Randall. This year, renowned string theorist Ed Witten will give a talk on quantum knots, see here.

The Hamilton walk  is one of the core activies of Maths Week Ireland, an initiative to raise awareness of maths in Ireland with events and lectures all around the country. Co-ordinated by CALMAST, a science outreach group at Waterford Institute of Technology, Maths Week has grown larger every year – you can find the program of events here. I will give a talk in Dublin on Wednesday evening, on relativity and the recent ‘faster than the speed of light’ experiment, see here .

Gravity probe B experiment does not ‘prove Einstein right’

A good example of the problems of science journalism we discussed in the last post can be seen in this month’s media treatment of the important results from the NASA Satellite Gravity Probe B. After many years of frustration, the experiment has reported important evidence in support of two distinct predictions of the general theory of relativity – the geodesic effect (a distortion of spacetime by the earth) and frame dragging (caused by the rotation of the earth). See here for details of the experiment.

The result is a fantastic achievement. It offers important support for general relativity, a theory that underpins a great deal of modern physics, from our view of the origin of the universe to our understanding of black holes. It’s worth noting that such tests are rare and notoriously difficult (unlike the case of special relativity) and sincere congratulations are due to Principal Investigator Francis Everitt and all the team who worked so hard and so long to produce this important result.

The NASA Gravity Probe B Satellite

However, I was quite disappointed at the way the result was portrayed in newspapers and in science magazines. Almost without exception, the experiment was described as  ‘Einstein proven right‘ – see for example this article in the prestigious journal Science.

What’s the problem? The statement ‘Einstein proven right’ is deeply problematic for two reasons
1. As Einstein (and later Karl Popper) frequently pointed out, it is a basic tenet of the scientific method that no experiment can ‘prove’ a theory right. An experiment can offer supporting evidence but the case is never closed, because we do not know what new evidence may emerge in the future to cast doubt on other predictions of the theory
2. The constant personalization of the theory of relativity with Einstein creates the impression that the theory depends upon one scientist only, and devalues the work of hundreds of relativists since.
For the above two reasons, most physicists would have framed the result as ‘general relativity passes two important tests’.

It seems to me that such shorthand reportage does science no favours, as it misrepresents the result and plays into the hands of doubters and anti-science commentators. I wrote to Science to make this point; they have declined to publish my letter, so I am free to reproduce it here

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Re: At Long Last, Gravity Probe B Satellite Proves Einstein Right

News Section, Science, May 5

As a physicist and a science writer, I was surprised by your headline ‘At Long Last, Gravity Probe B Satellite Proves Einstein Right’ (News Section, Science, May 5).

To be sure, the Gravity Probe B experiment is a fantastic achievement that offers spectacular evidence in support of two distinct predictions of the general theory of relativity. This is important support for a theory that underpins a great deal of modern physics, from our view of the origin of the universe to our understanding of black holes. It’s also worth noting that such tests are rare and notoriously difficult (unlike the case of special relativity) and sincere congratulations are due to the team who worked so hard and so long to produce this important result.

However, your headline is problematic for anyone with a knowledge of the scientific method or an interest in the philosophy of science.

In the first instance, it is a fundamental tenet of science that no experiment can ‘prove a theory right’, as Einstein himself (and Karl Popper) frequently acknowledged. Even the most ingenious experiment can only offer evidence in support of a theory –‘right so far’ (and this is leaving aside the difficult question of the interpretation of scientific data). The error is not simply a question of headline shorthand as it is repeated in the opening sentence of the article;  ‘..a ..NASA spacecraft has confirmed general relativity’.

Second, it is a pity that relativity is so often portrayed as the work of one great scientist. Granted, it is a matter of historical record that the general theory of relativity was first formulated by Einstein singlehandedly. However, a great many mathematicians and theoretical physicists have explored, deepened and refined the theory since that time (obtaining solutions to the field equations and deriving concrete predictions from these solutions, for example). Framing the story in terms of Einstein alone ignores this work, and implies that the entire edifice of relativity is dependent upon one scientist.

In sum, it is no easy task to summarize a groundbreaking scientific experiment in a brief article, but most physicists would frame this important result as ‘general relativity passes another experimental test’ rather than ‘Einstein proven right’.

Yours sincerely

Dr Cormac O’Raifeartaigh

Visiting Fellow, Program on Science, Technology and Society, Harvard Kennedy School

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The co-production of knowledge

In his last lecture on the history and sociology of science for sophomores at Harvard, Alex Wellerstein brought the class up to date with the latest thinking in Science and Technology Studies (STS) with an overview of the idea of co-production.

The idiom of co-production aims to get away from both the deterministic view of science as divorced from social context, and from social determinism. Instead, scientific knowledge is seen to be produced in an integral process that involves both the scientific method and the social context. Hence, the idea of co-production engages with questions that are both metaphysical and epistemological – how the world is, and how we find out about it – but blurs the boundaries between the two. This is slightly different to previous theories such as the sociology of scientific knowlege (SSK) of the Edinburgh group; a key difference is that co-production does not claim that social context ‘trumps’ the scientific method, but sees both as integral to scientific knowledge.

The figure most associated with the idiom of the co-production of knowledge is Sheila Jasanoff, the brilliant Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Harvard (my current boss!). Sheila has long been a leading light in the field of STS, and her articulation of the idea of co-production is considered one of her main contributions to the field.

In her seminal book, “States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order”, a collection of essays by diverse authors on the subject, Sheila gives an overview of the idiom of co-production in the first chapter and a summary in the last. She describes the objectives of co-production in terms of four components

- description: a view of science in society and society in science
- explanation: how co-production mitigates against linear and mono-causual stores about scientific progress
-normativity : the analysis of emerging orders
- prediction : prediction, prescription and action

There is a great deal to the concept of co-production, including concepts such as causality loops, positive feedback and co-evolution. I won’t attempt to summarize them here but you can find a very good review of the main themes in the last chapter of the book above.

Reception

The articulation of co-production in its current form is relatively recent, and I am not aware of major reactions against it from philosophers or scientifists. One obvious benefit is clarity; a common criticism (and misunderstanding) of the social constructivists is the idea that scientific knowledge is entirely socially constructed. This is not really what most constructivists argue, and I think the idiom of co-production clarifies this a lot.
Also, it is rather hard to argue against co-production- how can one argue that scientific knowledge (or any other sort) is not co-produced to some extent? I think this is the cleverest part of the concept, and I suspect it will help convince scientists of the importance of social context, and go some way towards mending fences between the scientists and the sociologists of science.

That said, it seems to me that while co-production helps to  clarify how knowledge is created, it doesn’t say much about another part of the scientific process, i.e. how good scientific theories survive the passage of time (this the context of discovery vs the context of justification we’ve met before). You might argue that the subsequent testing is also co-produced, and so it is; but where a given scientific theory is produced in one place and one context, it is subsequently tested over time all over the world in different contexts by people specialize in proving each other wrong! Hence, many scientists argue that social context arguments ultimately fade away.

A good example of this is the famous argument by historian Paul Forman concerning the indeterminacy of quantum physics. Scientists in Germany were heavily criticized after WWI for predicting that science would win the war; according to Forman, the indeterminacy of quantum physics may be attributed – at least to some degree – to an attempt to appease the population (we are happy to admit the limits of science etc). However, most physicists strongly disagree with Forman’s hypothesis for three reasons

• the postulate of wave properties for the electron was first made by de Broglie (a Frenchman), and the first observation of electron diffraction was by Davisson and Germer (Americans). The latter forces you to quantum duality and thus to indeterminacy – whether you like it or not

• many other non-German scientists (Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac etc) played a major role in the development of the theory

• the theory survived over time worldwide because, although crazy, it matched experiment

Enigma and Katyn Forest

Wow. Caught the movie ‘Enigma’ again on tv last Sunday night. I knew the story, but Id forgotten just how good it was. I  enjoyed the film so much I bought the book on Monday in order to re-read it. What did I discover? I hadn’t read the book at all. Oh joy!

Robert Harris is an superb historical novelist and this has to be his masterpiece. Superbly written, well-informed, a fantastic plot – it simply has everything. Even the love angle is utterly convincing. As for the maths – the description of the codebreakers and their methods is superb. I think the description of the loneliness of the mathematican is the best I’ve ever come across.

Most important of all, the story just rushes along. It basically concerns the famous work at Bletchley Park in WWII, as the best and the brightest of Britain struggle desperately to break the Navy, Luftwaffe and Werhrmacht codes using a combination of guesswork and an early computer. The hero of the book is young mathematician Tom Jericho, which I presume is a stand-in for computer genius Alan Turing. Every now and then, the German ‘weather book’ changes, and they’re back to zero. The description of the codebreaking is superb, as is the serious subplot – when the Allies evesdrop on German reports of the Russian Katyn forest massacre, a British codebreaker of Polish origin decides he doesn’t want to be allied with Russia and attempts to leak the codebreaking secrets to the Germans. Clever plot – perhaps it really happened?

Apart from a great plot, it’s good to see codebreaking get recognition it deserves. Just last week, I read an article on the Battle of Britian that ignored the role of science, as usual.Yes, the pilots were brave – but important advances in both code-breaking and radar also gave the Britian an edge in that vital battle..

A  super read and a super introduction to the world of computing. Go and get it now.

Genius of Britain; Dawkins vs Hawking

This week Channel 4 have been running a superb series on British science and scientists, from the 17th century up to the present. It was a beautifully produced, meticulous piece of television, with mini-biographies of British scientists down through the ages, narrated by well-known scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Jim Al-Khalili and David Attenborough.

Each night covered a different century, with scientists like Hooke, Wren, Boyle, Halley and Newton in the first episode,  and Crick, Watson, Hoyle (with a link to Hawking’s work)  and Hamilton (with a link to Dawkin’s work) in the last. In between, one got to hear about other great, less-recognized scientists, such as Watt, Maxwell, Rutherford and Turing.

All in all, it was a superb series, truly inspirational, with a great balance between the sciences. I thought the chronological approach worked really well in general. Of course, the nationalistic angle made nonsense of the story at times; one kept wondering why a crucial step was left out, then you remembered that this was not the story of science, but of British science; a strange angle from a scientist’s point of view.

This might explain a few flaws here and there; for example, I thought the discussion of Fred Hoyle quite odd. Instead of discussing Hoyle’s major contribution to cosmology ( the carbon step in nucleosynthesis), narrator Jim Al -Khalili concentrated on Hoyle’s ‘steady-state’ theory of the universe. This reverence for Hoyle’s theory is baffling to non-British scientists; steady-state made very little impact in the world of science outside of Britain (despite huge media interest in Britain) and proved to be comprehensively at variance with the evidence.

In the last part of the program, Richard Dawkins made the point that science is not undamentally about math, or experiments, but about asking questions. There ensued a fascinating short discussion between Dawkins and Hawking on the big questions.

Richard Dawkins  and Stephen Hawking in conversation

“What really happened before the Bang?” Dawkins asked Hawking.  Hawking gave the standard, simple response – there is no before because time is part of the universe, as predicted by general relativity (he seemed surprised by the question, as was I).

Hawking had a far harder question for Dawkins:

“Why are you obsessed with God?” It is exactly what I would have asked, but Dawkins seemed quite taken aback by the question. He responded initially by claiming that Stephen had brought up the question first, with his famous last line of A Brief History of Time (‘..for then we shall know the mind of God’), which isn’t much of an answer. However, Richard then said that his main problem with religion is that religious explanations for nature are a distraction from the real path of finding out have things work.. fair comment!

Update

It seems a book based on the series is already available..more on the series here

The Irish Times reviewed the series in their weekend review; sadly, it wasn’t a very good piece, focusing almost exclusively on the fact that Robert Boyle was Irish not British. A fair point, but where was the rest of the review?

Einstein, de Valera and the Institutes for Advanced Study

Is there a collective noun for a roomful of professors? A great many of the most senior figures of Irish academia turned up in Trinity College Dublin on Saturday night to hear the annual statutory lecture of the School of Theoretical Physics of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.

The lecture, titled “No excuses in paradise: the past, present and future of the institutes for advanced studies” (see poster here) was a fascinating talk on the history and purpose of the Institutes for Advanced Study at Princeton, Dublin, Paris and elsewhere. It was given by Professor Peter Goddard, the current director of the famous Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in the US. This institute, one of the most prestigious research centres in the world, has hosted staff such as Einstein, Godel, Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson and Ed Witten and became the prototype for similar institutes around the world. Peter Goddard himself is extremely well-known as one of the early pioneers of string theory.

The  speaker started by tracing the initial idea by the American educationalist Abraham Flexner in the 1920s to seek funding for an Institute of Advanced Study in the US that could compete with research centres in Germany such as that in Gottingen. The plan was to create an elite American ‘graduate university’ –  a university that did not teach at undergraduate level but focused on research and on the training of researchers. Of course such an institute could only be staffed by the best of the best, and Einstein, already a world figure in science, was approached on one of his periodic visits to Caltech. Worried about the rise of the Nazis, Einstein quickly agreed. You can read more about this story here, but Prof Goddard showed a wonderful slide showing the famous issue of the New York Times with the headline: ‘Einstein to set up new school’.

Einstein in his office at IAS

The speaker then explained how during the war the Irish premier Eamon de Valera, a former mathematician, decided a similar institute would be of benefit in Ireland. Due to economic constraints, it was settled that the institute would deal with theoretical physics (as there were great advances being made in this field and it required no expensive equipment) and with Celtic studies (also not very expensive and of national interest). On the advice of Einstein, de Valera approached Schroedinger, the father of wave mechanics, to persuade him to come to Ireland to direct the institute.

This part of the story was well-known to an Irish audience but the speaker gave a very nice sketch of the history – Schroedinger did come in 1940 and spent many years at the Dublin IAS, followed by other prestigious theoreticians such as Heitler, Lanzcos and Synge. The institute became a great success internationally, attracting regular visits by famous physicists such as Paul Dirac. Indeed, some nice slides concerning Dirac’s visits were shown, not least a menu demonstrating the attraction of Ireland during wartime. Another slide showed a comment by Dirac, expressing surprise that the Irish Prime Minister had time to sit through a whole mathematics conference! All in all, it was a lovely overview of the history of the Dublin IAS and included a nice reference to Lochlainn’s work (it turns out Goddard collaborated quite a bit with Lochlainn in the early days of supersymmetry) .

Nobel laureates Dirac, Heisenberg and Schrodinger in Sweden

The speaker then explained how the American idea was imported back to continental Europe, notably at IHES in Bures-sur-Yvette just outside Paris (set up in 1958). This institute is also highly regarded in the world of academia, thanks to the work of mathematicians such as Alain Connes and the late Louis Michel. There are also informal links between the institutes – many of the professors in the audience had spent time at more than one (in my own family we have fond memories of years spent at both the Princeton and Paris institutes as well as Dublin).

The lecture finished with a brief discussion of the role of such research institutes. In a world dominated by the technological application of science, it is sometimes hard to persuade people of the importance of enquiry for it’s own sake – ‘the usefulness of useless knowledge’. Of course, one answer to this is that we don’t know which part of scientific enquiry will prove technologically useful (look at Boolean algebra or the development of the web at CERN). However, a deeper answer is that knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge will always be important for their own sake. The professor summed up with the best quote of the night: ‘the thing about a scholar’s paradise is that there are no excuses for failing to do something important!’

So have the institutes been a success overall and should they continue? As a student, I often heard certain university staff mutter darkly that precious little work went on there – however such comments rarely came from staff at the highest levels. It’s worth noting that Saturday’s speaker was introduced by Professor Samson Shatashvili, the well-known string theorist who directs the Hamilton Mathematics Institute , a research institute that functions within Trinity College. Prof Goddard didn’t compare the role of such institutes with the institutes for advanced study directly, but I think his historical account demonstrated that the latter still have an important role to play. As regards the Dublin IAS, I should have said that the lecture above took place in the middle of a conference to celebrate the 60th birthday of Professor Werner Nahm, a noted theorist at the Dublin IAS. A measure of the stature of Werner, and of the continuing prestige of DIAS, can be seen from the list of speakers in the conference program here. Another indication of the continuing success of DIAS was the preponderance of well-known international figures on Saturday night such as Shatashvili, Nahm, Goddard and Frohlich – not to mention the mathematician Micheal Atiyah and a quiet man in the back row who I later realised was Peter Higgs (yes, he of the elusive boson).

The school of theoretical physics (DIAS) on Burlington  Road

Faraday Institute summer school

I spent all of last week at a summer school on science, philosophy and religion hosted by the Faraday Institute of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. I found the course absolutely excellent and have tried to summarize most of the talks on a daily basis as the conference progressed (see last four posts below). You can also find a list of speakers and talks on the conference website .

All that is left to do is to make a few general observations. I found the school quite exceptional, a real treat for anyone with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, and its impact on religion (and vice versa). A different topic was tackled each day, from historical and philosophical interactions between science and religion on Tuesday to Big Bang cosmology on Wednesday, from the theory of evolution on Thursday to ethical challenges in contemporary science on Friday.  Each day would begin with an introductory overview of the basic science (or history), followed by talks on slightly more specific subjects. Each talk would finish by exploring the philosophical and theological implications of the science.

All the speakers kept good time, leaving 30 minutes of question/answer session after each talk. This definitely made for good audience participation. This was followed by a panel discussion every evening on questions raised during the day.

Note: videos of the talks will be available on the multipage  multimedia page of the Faraday website from mid-September only, apologies for misinformation in earlier posts.

St Edmund’s college, Cambridge

Other reasons for the success of the conference were

1. Fantastic environment; it’s hard to beat Cambridge on this, especially with everyone staying in the same college

2. All the talks were in the same venue, a nice small conference room that holds about 50.

3. Interdisciplinary nature; since the subject matter spanned science, history of science, philosophy and theology, none of the talks were too specialised, the bugbear of most scientific conferences

4. All the talks were by world-class researchers, well used to giving public talks on their subject – a treat for anyone interested in the communication of science.

5. No parallel sessions; since everyone was at the same talk, it made for great discussions over dinner.

Coffee time outside the conference room

A number of my colleagues have expressed reservations about the course, pointing out that it is funded by the Templeton Foundation. All I can say is that all of the speakers presented the science or history in an unbiased way. The week was a treat in the history and philosophy of science, even for those with no interest in religion. That said, it was fascinating hearing renowned theologians criticizing the fundalmentalist positions taken by some religions (and atheists). No-one can demolish the Intelligent Design argument quite as comprehensively as an eminent theologian! Another good example of the impartiality of the conference can be seen in the fact that the scientific work of Richard Dawkins was cited on several occasions and two of his books were on sale  on the conference table..

Update

Speak of the devil! About 10 minutes after writing the above, I walked right past Richard Dawkins himself. He was walking up the back drive into Clare College just as I was wandering out. I wonder if he is giving a talk here in Cambridge? I was dying to ask, but he looked a bit tired and had luggage with him. Possibly not a good moment for questions from random strangers..