A Different Universe

Last night, the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter sponsored a talk by Robert Laughlin, a Physics Nobel Laureate from Stanford. The usual "powerpoints" were rather different -- they consisted of the author's cartoons some of which are also contained in his 2005 book A Different Universe. Among many other things, Laughlin argued that emergence is where the action is; he also spoke of the "crisis of biology" and the "post-mathematical phase" in physics, and how the wine from the Neckar valley (made by physicists??) isn't that good at all... I guess I could agree -- the wine from further south (Kaiserstuhl) is certainly drinkable -- I can attest to it. Now I have to read the book -- despite or because of this review...

Apparently (wikipedia says so), the book argues against the overuse of reductionism in fields such as string theory, and emphasizes that the future of physics research is in the study of emergence. One of the quotes from the talk was (roughly): don't look for the science frontier "out there" in cosmos, nor "down there" at the scale of the tiny (quantum theory) -- rather, "it's all around us". Hmm... certainly a Powers-of-Ten guy needs to think about this... Is the Laughlin reducing everything to emergence? Well, let's not overuse reduction! Ok; now I really need to read the book! ... and lines to read before I sleep ...