Have a Little Faith in Physics

Joe Treen ponders the fairness of everybody jumping on evolution, when other perfectly respectable theories abound in science that remain unbruised. And when we say he ponders it, we mean to say, he muses on the subject in a fashion drier than the Sahel.

Some people would probably argue that the reason I never went into physics was that it is too hard, that I wasn’t smart enough, that I didn’t have what is sometimes called “brain power.” No doubt that is why I avoided chemistry, botany, mathematics, medicine and anything that ends in “ology.” But not physics. I passed it up for entirely different reasons. Physics, you see, is a red state science, embraced by Evangelicals and hard-line right-wing Republicans. I grasped that fact instinctively the first time my high school physics teacher, Mr. Polley, had us compute the frictional coefficient of the mass of the hypotenuse of the square of the other two sides. Steer clear of this, I said to myself. This has got red state written all over it.

I am, if nothing else, perceptive. And as nearly as I can tell, Big Physics has aligned itself with the Christian Right. This became abundantly clear during the flap over intelligent design. You may recall that the scientific world went ballistic when “Evolution is only a theory” stickers began appearing on public school textbooks in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Kansas. No, no, the biologists shouted. A theory is not some lame-brain opinion. A theory is something that has been observed and tested for years and years. A theory can predict what will happen with great certainty. A theory is one baby step away from being a law.

Biologists were so outraged they practically hired a PR person to promote the word “theory.” They got a story on the front page of the New York Times about the TRUE meaning of the word. They put up an elaborate exhibit at the Museum of Natural History in New York on Charles Darwin that included TV monitors of important scientists explaining what a theory is really all about. And when a federal judge, one appointed by G-Dub no less, wrote a gazillion-page opinion denouncing the intelligent designers, everyone assumed it was the coup de grace. No more nonsense about what “theory” really means.

But then came the rednecks, or, as they prefer to be known, the physicists. They started their own little campaign for something they call string theory. Their theory doesn’t have a lot to do with cellos or lutes or guitars, although they like to wheel those instruments out for demonstration purposes. Nor is string theory about balls of twine collected by nerdy boys. No, string theory, it turns out, merely holds that everything in the whole universe from the computer you are using to the gravity that is keeping you in your chair to the light you read by is made up of tiny little unseeable minuscule subatomic strings that vibrate. It is, the physicists claim, the unified theory that Einstein searched for his entire life, what he called “reading the mind of God.”

Amazing. A theory that explains everything. What could be better? But, oh-oh, get this. String theory has never been proven. It has never been tested. It has only been around since Gerald Ford was president. And it has never predicted a single thing. So what, say the physicists. That’s its beauty and charm. The very fact that it can’t be proven is proof that it is true.

So why didn’t they call it “string hypothesis”?

Okay, so maybe physicists have a strong belief in their own powers. No one has ever accused them of humility. But here’s a surprise: string theorists actually seem to believe in intelligent design. One of string theory’s founders, Leonard Susskind of Stanford University, asked in a recent book, “Can science explain the extraordinary fact that the universe appears to be uncannily, nay, spectacularly, well designed for our own existence?”

In other words, he is saying, if the Big Bang hadn’t banged at just the right nanosecond, if this or that black hole didn’t have exactly the right gravity, if the temperatures hadn’t been just right, there wouldn’t have been a universe or an earth or a you or a me. Apparently there was an unseen hand making the whole thing work. Remind you of anything? Oh yeah. The argument of intelligent designers.

You’ve got to hand it to the physicists. They may be rednecks but they ain’t dumb. You can’t go wrong being an intelligent designer if you are lobbying the Bush Administration (and anyone else who will listen) to spend billions and billions of dollars on all sorts of expensive equipment – from particle accelerators to satellites – so you can try to prove that string theory is, well, a theory. In short, physicists are selling the possibility of scientific proof of the mind of God, science the right wing can get interested in – not like those fables the global warming crowd has been peddling. Of course, if they fail, they will have no choice but to move to Kansas. Another reason I didn’t go into physics.