Fifty Years of Non-Physics
March 3, 2005
Veneziano has been appointed a professor at the Collège de France. For those unaware of who he is, he is the founder of string theory, the pioneer of this approach to theoretical physics, which combines complexity and sterility. I have already discussed this approach while commenting on Brian Greene's book, "The Elegant Universe." Another mention of this fantastical endeavor appears in the context of a book recently published by Thibaud Damour, a member of the Paris Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with essayist Jean-Claude Carrière: "Conversations on the Multiplicity of the World and the Unicity of Ideas."
The more terrestrial technology advances, the more we witness the crumbling of the edifice of ideas. Veneziano's appointment to such a prestigious position is a sign of the degeneration of our fundamental and theoretical physics, a process that has continued for more than half a century. Souriau considers that the last significant contribution to our understanding of matter came from Richard Feynman with his theory of quantum electrodynamics. After that, the source simply dried up. A decade ago, Souriau read me the opening of a speech by the chairman of a theoretical physics conference dedicated to superstring theory. I remember it as if it were yesterday:
"Despite the fact that superstring theory has never, to date, explained a single phenomenon or proposed a single experiment, we must note, given the ever-increasing number of articles published daily on the subject, the extraordinary vitality of this new discipline."
Yes, you read that correctly. It's simply grotesque, pitiful. Why has such activity been allowed to develop in this way? Because in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed are kings. Theoretical physicists have had no new ideas for decades. They produce nothing tangible, propose no verifiable models. They are simply mocking the world and would be utterly incapable of proving otherwise. The same applies in theoretical astrophysics, where the practitioners speak like vendors in a souk, like the Shingouz from the Valérian comics, habituals of the "Central Point," auctioning off dark matter, or black matter, or energy of the same name. They extol the virtues of the repulsive power of the vacuum, just as, before Torricelli's discovery, people claimed "nature abhors a vacuum," and that it was this very repulsion that caused mercury to rise in barometers.
Taking up his post at the Collège de France, Veneziano gave his first introductory lecture. He declared himself quite satisfied, as one can be paid there until age 70, and he is only 62. He will therefore be able to "work" for eight more years. What? Nobody knows. Everything is surreal in the strongest sense of the word. Superstring theory stands at the forefront of an approach that completely severs all ties with reality. It is precisely this total independence of this 21st-century physics from real-world phenomena that Veneziano proudly claims as "a resolutely fundamental endeavor." These are people trying to lay the foundations of a building they know nothing about: its shape, its geometry, its functionality.
Souriau is fond of saying that theoretical physics is:
Mathematics, minus rigor, and physics, minus experience.
Souriau, now 82, a sort of modern-day Lagrange, will leave a tangible mark in the history of scientific thought. But one should not be surprised that he was denied entry into the Academy of Sciences by people whose names will be forgotten, such as the astronomer Ferrembach, who once, in front of me, congratulated himself on blocking the entry of a mathematician into this "learned assembly." Souriau, whose work remains only partially understood, believes theoretical physics has become a vast psychiatric hospital where the mad have seized power, and I fully agree with him. With Veneziano's appointment to the Collège de France, irrationality enters this house through the grand door. But it is everywhere. At the Academy of Sciences, Thibaud Damour, also a member of this sect, claims to be building a theory of "the time before the Big Bang," which, in his own words, "is not quite ready yet." Do you believe it's necessary to introduce new ideas or leave behind significant, memorable work to gain entry into the Academy of Sciences?
People who produce nothing and will produce nothing in the coming decades—I predict—will continue to be protected by certain inner circles, like Cerberus guarding the gates. Because of Thibaud Damour, I was unable to cross the threshold of the seminar at the Institut des Hautes Études in Bures-sur-Yvette, where I had wished to present my work in cosmology and theoretical astrophysics. Damour refused outright without even reading my work, and everyone in the house accepted his expert opinion without question. The obsession with preserving their power and leadership drives people without ideas to keep those who do have ideas outside. The same shocking situation applies to the outrageous behavior of James Lequeux, who long served as editor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and went so far as to violate the very rules of scientific publication—based on peer review—when, after a year-long struggle, I was finally proving my expert reviewer wrong. This is shocking because it represents a complete intellectual dishonesty. Lequeux is retired. He has never discovered anything, contributed nothing. Another whose passage through the scientific arena will leave no trace.
James Lequeux (the photo is old)
Academician Evry Schatzmann, long-time president of the Union Rationnaliste, a shadowy organization that no one speaks of anymore, which had set itself the goal of fighting "pseudo-sciences and intellectual fraud," is now just an aging man, having done his best to play the role of epistemological enforcer in astrophysics. The tally of his career: practically zero. Could one compare such a man to figures like Eddington and Jeans? Certainly not. But know this: this individual will leave a trace because of a single photograph—the participants of the famous Solvay Congress in Belgium, gathering all the leading lights of science at the time. There stands young Schatzmann, next to Bethe, Einstein, Dirac, and many others. Someone must have thought, "He's a promising young Frenchman," because I truly cannot see what he was doing in that photograph.
There was a time, an era, between the wars, when each photograph of the participants at the Solvay Congress brought together, in terms of science, a genuine constellation of historical figures. Since Feynman's death, who could we now display in a new photograph? Veneziano?
The theoretical physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists of our time are destined for oblivion in science.
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