The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - An Origins Podcast EXCLUSIVE: A Dialogue with Cormac McCarthy About Science, on the occasion of his newest book releases

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Cormac McCarthy is a literary icon. Winner of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel All the Pretty Horses, and the Pulitzer Prize for his apocalyptic novel The Road, Norma’s earlier novel, Blood Meridian has been labelled The Great American Novel. Many people did not know that this cultural giant is also fascinated by, and amazingly knowledgeable about science. Reading his newest books, The Passenger and Stella Maris (released this week!), however, and that becomes obvious. The protagonists are mathematical and physics prodigies, and just as one may requires a dictionary to keep up with the the remarkably diverse prose in Cormac’s writing, some people may need to consult some popular books on science to fully appreciate the scientific asides sprinkled throughout both volumes. I first met Cormac at the Santa Fe Institute back when I was considering a possible position there as its Director, some years ago. I was shocked to walk into the kitchenette there and discover him, as I had no idea that is where he spent his time. But, as we discuss in our dialogue, he moved to Santa Fe at the invitation of Nobel Laureate physicist Murray Gell Mann to join the new Institute. Cormac and I became fast friends then, and have remained friends ever since. The best hour of radio I ever did was with Cormac and Werner Herzog, on the occasion of Herzog’s film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, where both Cormac and Werner talked with amazing authority about the evolution paleontology of early modern humans. Then later, he honored me by asking if he could copyedit the paperback version of my book Quantum Man, a scientific biography of Richard Feynman. He said he wanted to make the paperback version ‘perfect’, in part by removing all exclamation marks and semicolons.. Of course I said yes, and we added his name as copyeditor on the front page! I have known that Cormac is extremely reluctant to appear in public or do interviews. He agreed to appear in our film The Unbelievers, which was a great gift, but has often demurred when I have asked him to appear in other public panels on subjects we love to talk about in private. So, when I asked him if, on the occasion of the publication of his new books, the first books in 16 years, if we could sit down and record a conversation about science for The Origins Podcast, I was shocked and thrilled when he agreed. He is 89 years old now, and I was so pleased to have the chance to record some of his thoughts on science for posterity.He invited us into his home for an afternoon conversation after a long lunch, and the conversation that ensued was much like the conversations we have had over the years. Cormac loves to discuss science, but prefers to listen to physicists talk about their work rather than initiate conversations. He is, after all, notoriously laconic. But when he does speak about science, his insights are fascinating. Using some of the ideas discussed in his new books a launching points, our discussion ranged over quantum mechanics, the role of mathematics in science, and whether there will ever be a theory of everything. There were a variety of challenges that day, including the difficulty of filming something in a sunlight room without window shades, but the end result was unique and memorable. I hope you agree. As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project Youtube channel as well. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

I'm Lawrence Krauss, and welcome to this Origins podcast exclusive. I say exclusive because today's podcast is with the remarkable writer, Cormac McCarthy, a writing legend and certainly one of America's greatest writers. Cormac is notorious for having done very, very few interviews. And I was very honored when Cormac, who is a old friend, agreed to invite us into his house. to have a discussion upon the publication of his recent books. At the time, his book The Passenger had just appeared, and just this week, the second book associated with that,

Stella Maris appeared on December 6th. And I wanted to use that as a springboard to talk about science. Cormac likes to talk about science, what many people may not realize is, as he said to me, numerous times he's more interested in science than literature. and likes to have discussions of those ideas. And I wanted to use certain discussions within the context of the book to elaborate aspects of science and culture. Cormac is notoriously laconic,

and it's very difficult to get him to, not just do an interview, which he almost ever does, but to speak at length about these ideas. And you'll see in the discussion, it's more like the kind of dialogue he and I have where he likes to listen to physicists talk about physics and and then comment on that and you'll see that I'm doing a lot of talking in this in this discussion and I recognize that in advance and and I wish there was less of me and more of Cormac but I think what Cormac says is incredibly insightful and interesting and gives you

you view of the processes that go on in his mind, which have helped produce the kind of remarkable literature that he's ultimately produced. It's a discussion of science, not literature, and I hope you enjoy it and find what I find so remarkable that this literary icon is also incredibly knowledgeable about math and science and comfortable talking about it. And it represents, as I say in the podcast, the kind of fusion of art and culture, which I think is so important in which the Origins Podcast and the Origins Project Foundation is built to demonstrate and elucidate. So enjoy this discussion with Cormac McCarthy, one of the unique experiences. He's 90 years old, almost 89, and it was late afternoon, and I'm sure he was tired.

and I particularly appreciated him taking the time out to have that discussion. And you'll also see, for those who can watch it, the challenges of recording a podcast in a room with windows and no blinds in a very sunny day. So all of that taking into context. I hope you'll watch the version without advertisements by getting a paid subscription to the Critical Mass Substack site. those subscriptions go to supporting the Origins Project Foundation, which runs the podcast and all of our other activities. And if you can't do that, you'll watch it, I hope, on our YouTube channel or listen to it on any place where you can listen to podcasts. And enjoy the rare occasion to listen to a few words from Cormac McCarthy. Thanks.

Cormac, thanks so much for spending time with me, allowing us to be here and welcoming us into your home. so we can have a chat about the world and science and and it's a real pleasure. Thank you very much for doing this. Well, thanks for going. It is, it means more to me than you may know to spend time together again. And we're here to talk about science. I don't know if a lot of people know, but I do, because we spend time together, how interested you are in science.

I think you once told me that that's what you like to read the most with science. Yeah, I like, I'm a big fan. I mean, I think it may be clear for you. for the first time in your last book where you actually talk about science and then maybe the first book where you talked about science I'm not sure but now this is an origins podcast and I

want to find out, I never asked you where did your interest in science begin? Were your parents were they scientific at all? No, no. Where did that interest in science begin? In science, it's interesting. Yeah, but how did you get exposed to it as a kid or?

Well, no, it's around. I mean How would anybody not be interested in science? Well, I agree. My feeling is once you know that it's out there, how can you not be interested? But you have to know what's out there. Did you read books by scientists when you were a kid? No.

No. No. Not when I was a kid, no. So it must have stumbled upon it somehow. Stumbled upon it somehow. That's probably the best answer. I stumbled upon it somehow. Okay.

And then is physics the part of science that you've find most interesting, by the way. Yeah. I agree. It's the most interesting. And once you stumble upon it, did you make an effort then to read books by scientists? Yeah, sure. Yeah. And did you read all the standards like Gamow, George Gamow and people like that when you're younger? Yeah. And Feynman. And Feynman. Yeah, Feynman, his was one, turn me on. I mean, his character of physical law, I think, was the book that really convinced me. You know what it convinced me was that science was still alive. It wasn't all done by sort of dead white men

200 years ago, that there was still a lot to learn. Well, that's interesting because Feynman said that we live in a period where we're going to learn all about science, and after we're dead there'd be nothing else to know. And I think that's not exactly right. And in fact, I think you use that quote in the new book when you talk about Feynman.

You specifically relate that. And it was very unfinement-esque to say that because Feynman used to say that he didn't think there'd be ultimately a theory of everything. He thought it'd be like an onion, and each time we, you know, we peep back more. Which seems like the opposite. Yeah, yeah. And so given that he said that, you'd think he'd always

think there'd be something more to discover. Well, most of us do think. Now, we first met when I was visiting the Santa Fe Institute and where you spent a lot of time. How did that interaction? I mean, you didn't move to Santa Fe for the Institute, I'm assuming. Yes, I did. You did? Yeah.

And it was because of that, that you wanted to be here so you could spend time there? I moved to Santa Fe so I could be near the Institute. And it was because of the viewers in science. I didn't realize that, okay. Oh, yeah, sure.

And you regularly, and that's a good place to meet people and talk about science. Excellent. And you can see it from the new book, but one of the people who was instrumental in starting the Santa Fe Institute was Murray Galman, who,

and is that how you knew about the Institute? Was it because of Murray? Yeah, he invited me to come. Oh, really? Interesting. And he was an amazing scientist who also knew everything about everything else. Yes, he did. Yeah.

In fact, yeah, he would, no matter what it was, he would explain to you why you were wrong. He would tell you why you were mispronouncing your own name. Exactly. He always did that. First time I met him, he told me why I was mispronouncing my own name. Yeah. Absolutely. And for me, it was a joy in reading the new book.

because for the first time physics kind of makes an impact in there it was kind of fun for me to read indirectly about Murray and Feynman and George Sveig who I guess you also knew No George is a very good friend of mine we talk on the phone all the time All the time and we'll talk about that

But you know one of the things that that hit me that you write about Was your first talk about math In fact I guess the heroine of this book Is more of a mathematician than a physicist Well the book that's the book that's coming after this book is monologue by a lady mathematician.

By a lady mathematician, okay. Did you study math at all when you were younger or no? No, when I was younger, but later on, yeah. So you actually like the mathematics. Oh, yeah. And this connection between math and physics, I did agree in math and one in physics.

And the connection, of course, is incredibly important. But people often fall on one side or another. Does math attract you more than physics? I don't know. George and I talked about that one time, and I said, I thought math was richer and there was more depth to it. He disagreed. He said, no, there's a lot more to physics than there is to math. George White, by the way, had the same experience. He did math, and then he did physics. And, you know, for me, though, what happened, and I don't want this to be on me, but I want to preface your character, I did a degree in math and physics. I was always good in math, obviously. In fact, I started doing mathematical physics.

the kind of physics. But what I realized for me was that with physics, I could see where I was going, and with math I could do it, but I didn't know where I was going. So one of the characters, the protagonist, your book,

left math for physics. He changed his major from math to physics. And it says, the reason he gave in his letter were the best that he could come up with, but they weren't the reason. The reason was that in talking to his grandmother, in talking to her on those warm nights,

at his grandmother's kitchen table. He didn't talk to his grandmother. He talked at his grandmother's. At his grandmother. Okay, thank you. And at his grandmother's kitchen table, he had seen briefly into the deep heart of numbers and knew that the world would be forever closed to him.

Yeah, because of his sister who did see. Yeah, so that really resonated with me because it was like, yeah, you could do it, but somehow the deep heart of numbers, somehow the deep, the wealth and depth of mathematics you talk about, was something that I couldn't see ahead. I could accept it after learning it, but I couldn't see ahead into it.

Yeah, whereas the physics, I knew where I was going to go. Yeah. And the math I could take it in, but I didn't know there's something missing to me. And it was, and it was a fascinating experience. That word, the way you described it, totally captured my own experience. Okay.

And do you sense that you can't, that your own personal limitations in getting into the numbers or not? Well, I don't know. Everybody's limited. Yeah. No matter how good you are, math, or how deeply you pursue it, there's always more there. Yeah, there's always a lot more there.

In fact, the difference between math and physics, there's so many differences. But the math is all possible worlds, whereas physics is, at least the physics of our world is one of them. Yeah, physics is a finite business. And math, we don't know. Math appears to go on forever. We don't know if it does or not. You know, and I forget his name now. I've written one of my books.

I invented the word gauge theory with a mathematical physicist, and he said when he said when he was forced to choose between the true and the beautiful, he'd always choose the beautiful. And I think that's the difference between a mathematician and physics. People write about the elegant universe, but elegance is nice in physics, but the real world may not follow that elegance. And whether you like it or not, you have to follow the real world.

Well, we could be misleading a lot of quite a few famous physicists pursued it because of its beauty. But that can lead you astray. Exactly, it can lead you astray. And you have to realize sometimes, I mean, most of us, it's like our children, we think they're beautiful even if they aren't. But when you're a theoretical physicist, as I am, you can come up with a theory and it looks beautiful to you. And the hardest part, almost, of being a scientist, is when you have something that looks so beautiful that you figure it must be true. And then you discover the nature decided not to adopt that particular. No, there are some mathematical and physical theories.

They're absolutely gorgeous and wrong. Exactly, and wrong. And again, I'm jumping all around here because I was going to do this later, but because Murray, both of us knew him, and he later on said no, but it was clear when he developed the concept of quarks, for him it was a mathematical, it was just a mathematical trick in some of the way. trick in some ways, right? I mean, he was thinking of it as a mathematical tool, but the real world really wasn't like that. That's true, and I can show it to you in his paper, but he claimed

that that wasn't so that he knew all the time that it was real, but I can show you the paper where he says the exact opposite. Yeah, no, that's the sense, and somehow I knew that, and yeah, Murray later on claimed various things, but the strangest thing, if you're a theoretical physicists and the hardest thing to really accept is when you come up with some mathematical idea on a piece of paper, the realization that nature actually behaves that way is terrifying. Well, yeah, when you realize that nature thinks the same way you do and you've got to stop and think, how is that possible?

Exactly. How could it be? And so I can see how, when you write something down and say, okay, this is my trick. and maybe it touches nature a little bit, but it actually describes it. And there's this history, a long history. The concept of atoms for a long time was just a mathematical trick.

No one believed atoms were real. But it was a nice way to label and categorize matter. Well, George told me that he always understood the quarks were genuine physical entities. Zweig always thought they were genuine and Gilman thought that they were about that. Yes. Exactly. Another example, which actually allude to in the book, too,

which is a famous example of Paul Dirac, probably one of, next to Einstein, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century, he was, as he said cowardly, I think his was the first, because it was, the first example in modern physics of a particle that was developed that was proposed purely for mathematical reasons, the positron, the antimatter. And so he developed this theory And when he saw these particles had to exist He figured well, it must be the proton

It can't be a new particle You know, he thought somehow the proton had to be And it had a very different mass from the electron But he thought maybe there are reasons it has a different mass Yeah And later on when the positron was discovered Which was predicted by his theory Yeah

You know he said the theory was smarter than he was that he was a car, because it must have been incredibly daunting. It never had happened before that any theory predicted a new particle in nature that had never been discovered. And it was just too terrifying. And so this connection between mathematics

and physics is fascinating and inspiring, and you know, you probably know the, I don't know if you ever read the essay written by Eugene Vigner. Did you ever read it on the famous essay? The famous essay on the unexpected sort of why, it's not clear why mathematics should do such a good job of describing the world.

Yeah. And, you know, I like to think now that we have a better understanding of that when we did when Wigner wrote that. Inevitably, we must, you know? And the reason being that now we tend to think, we understand physics almost purely in terms of symmetries, mathematical symmetries determine the dynamics. The, as I like to say, the playing field determines the rules of the game. if baseball fields were five miles long instead of 90 feet or whatever,

be a very different game. And so if we think that the symmetries of nature are what determine how the world works, then it's kind of easier to understand why mathematics does such a good job. People often ask me, and I don't have an answer, whether we discover the mathematics or whether the mathematics is always there in some sense. It's an interesting question. It is an interesting question. in mathematics gives the illusion of existing in the world.

In other words, would mathematics be here if we weren't? Yeah, that's the question. And I think the answer is no, it would not. It's a human invention in spite of the illusion of others. I agree with you. It's a human invention, but it's really surprising that it's a human invention that happens to be the right language to describe nature.

Yeah, well, we have lots of. languages. But you know, but there's a difference between math and other languages. Math is a language, but it's a language plus a set of rules, a set of connections. You know, Feynman, in the character of physical law, the book that probably influenced both of us. He pointed that out in the, I think, the very first chapter. Take gravity. You can have two different ways of describing gravity. Gravity is a force that varies as one over R squared and points between the two objects. Or you can say, Gravity causes planets to go around in ellipses that traverse equal areas and equal times. Linguistically, those of two completely different things that have nothing to do with one another,

but math shows that they're exactly the same thing. Yeah, that's true. But whether the world is mathematics or whether mathematics just happens to be the best language to describe the world is a debate. And I guess we agree. I think it just happens to be the best language. I don't think the world is mathematics. No.

I have to also say one of my favorite lines. And I guess you just came up with this for the book. We were talking about math. After the bath comes the aftermath. I love that line. Did you have heard that line before or just wrote it? No, he's just, you know, who's there. It's probably one of the greatest descriptions of math.

Anyway, as you started to get interested in physics, you say it was Feynman? Was it Feynman, reading Feynman primarily, who got you? What about Einstein? Did you read his books? I did. I didn't find them all that interesting.

Other people were more interesting. I got fascinated by five men and I got to know him a little bit. Did you ever get to talk to Feynman at all? No, I never did. Yeah, you would have both enjoyed each other. Yeah, I would have liked to. Yeah, he was, him and the man were complimentary in so many ways. But your interest in science goes way beyond physics,

because I remember, I said to you, one of the favorite hours I've ever done on radio was when you came to Phoenix, when Werner Herzog's movie came out, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and you and Werner came together, and for the film, and, you know, we talked about it afterwards, but we did an hour of radio where you and Werner were talking about early modern humans with the kind of authority that I was so excited about, because on radio, for me and for you, science is just an integral part of being human. Most people think of it as something separate, something in column B. But the fact that you, both of you are cultural icons in different ways, you and Werner,

and for people to see that not just an interest in science, but an expertise that you were able to converse with, I thought was incredibly important for people to see that they could do something else and still not be ashamed of or a fact. afraid of actually understanding science in a detailed way. And so I'm wondering where did that interest in early modern humans come from, or was it just because it's a fascinating subject? I think just because it's a fascinating subject.

When it comes to early modern humans, we've talked a little bit. I remember on the phone having a long conversation with you about evolution. And there's a bunch of times in the new book, I have to say, where you alluded to evolution in a way that's interesting and may represent our differences in the context of evolution and the notion of God. And I think one of the characters is asked where they believe in God. And someone says, and then he says, I don't know who God is or what he is, but I don't believe all this stuff got here by itself, including me. Maybe everything evolves just like they say it does. But if you sound it to its source, you have to come ultimately

to an intention. And I know we've had that discussion. And let me back up you. That's not me, I know, I know. That's a character in the book talking. I wanted to ask you, I don't, I know, and I never assume that the character is you, but I wanted to ask you to what extent you totally disagree with that statement? I have to plead ignorance. Okay. I'm pretty much a materialist.

Oh, you are? Yeah. And I think one of the important things, that one of the big misconceptions that people have about evolution, and Richard Dawkins talks about this lot, rightly so, is the sense, that evolution is directed. Is that somehow it always has a direction for things to get better? There's no direction to evolution. No.

And people, you know, think that, oh, yes, things evolve to always get better, but they just evolve in the circumstances and there's no foresight. There's no where that we have foresight, but evolution doesn't. It just happens to be the way it is. And sometimes maladaptions occur that get in the way. In fact, it's... They do. In fact, one of the things you talk about in the book,

which is something, I remember Richard had said on stage with me, I think it was even in unbelievers, I'm not sure, was it what surprised him is that humans evolved to understand quantum mechanics. And in the book you talk about somewhere, and I could find the quote there, that it's remarkable and unexpected, that evolution produces things that are not intentional. Well, supposedly evolution is we evolved so as to understand,

the things which will help us to survive better. But we understand all kinds of things that have nothing to do with our survival. Darwin was always puzzled by that. What was that? Darwin. Yeah, yeah. He said, why do we understand this shit? It's not good.

Do this any good. Yeah, no, exactly. In fact, some people would say it might be counter, it might be a maladaptation. Sometimes it is. Yeah, and it may be in the context of us being able to destroy ourselves, ultimately a maladaptation. Well, I would imagine that we're going to still be here 100,000 years from now. Oh, I agree. A hundred thousand years old. What about 100 years to now? What do you think?

We have every opportunity of destroying ourselves. We certainly do. And in fact, because one of the characters in the book is involved in ultimately the Manhattan Project with Oppenheimer and others, there are some really remarkable pages about the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And one of the things I wondered was, is this true? I didn't know it. You said there were people who escaped from Hiroshima and rushed to Nagasaki to see their loved ones were safe, arriving just in time to be incinerated.

Apparently there were, I don't know there's any proof that is so, but it really could be. Yeah, it's an amazing thought. It never occurred to me. until then. And your descriptions of what the character's father saw, those, again, imaginings in your mind, or are they based on readings of what it was really like?

No, that's what the people reported. There's a sentence in here that I can't resist asking you about. Talking about, I think, the first vision of the explosion before the impact hits. Yeah. And you said something like, in that my caudal phantom, blooming in the dawn like an evil lotus,

and in the melting of solids not heretofore known to do so stood a truth that would silence poetry a thousand years. I love that sentence. I was going to ask you about it. It's just a sentence. It's just a sentence. The reason I guess I'm asking is that Oppenheimer, who was also a polymath, and as you know, he quoted that same line from the,

whatever it's Bhagavidavidah or whatever it's called, right after the bomb went off. He'd recited poetry right after the first explosion when he first saw it. I think he had tucked it up his sleeves to be ready. Yeah, of course, I'm sure he was, like Feynman,

I'm sure he was a showman. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, I didn't know him, but it could be hard to imagine he wasn't a showman. But silencing politely for a thousand years, the question I guess I was going to ask you was, I think you once told me that for you, science is much more interesting than literature.

Yeah. Do you think, in that sense, the results of science, silence, poetry for a thousand years, namely, if we think of the human experience and what, I mean, there'd be no legacy because we'll be all gone, but if we think of the, of humans' contribution to, of culture, that science ultimately outshines literature. You have to go back to Spengler. And you have to, in spite of Spangler being somewhat full of shit. He's an interesting guy.

And he is, somebody said, you can't really write him off as a, as a fraud because he's too smart. But Spengler understood that science certainly does and would have probably forever. We, both you and I intimately recognize that there's no separation. And as a scientist, I spend most of my life. And much of what this podcast is about and trying to show that science is part of our culture and get people as excited.

As you say, how could people not be excited? Because people don't realize that what fascinates them really is science. They think it's something else. But I mean, I'm a huge fan of Shakespeare. Don't get me wrong. But it's hard to think that it competes ultimately with the edifice of, say, the standard model of particle physics.

What do you think? Well, I think that's true. I think Spangler's right. We're going to have science after everything else is gone. Interesting. After everything else is gone, expand on that a little bit for me. Well, poetry. I mean, just people.

Do people seriously believe we still have poetry? Oh, interesting question. You know, that's an interesting question. I can't answer it. I'm a Philistine, I have to admit. And while I love to read, poetry is something I never could fully appreciate. I once got in trouble at Harvard

for saying to a very eminent professor of sort of poetry, I was trying to provoke her, I must admit, but I said, if poets really want to say something, why don't they just write it down? I think it's a fair question. Yeah, I think it, you know, I've always assumed it's my own problem that there's something I'm missing that I...

I don't think so. Really? Okay, interesting. Now, besides evolution, which... and early modern humans, which, as I say, I've learned a lot about and we've had fun talking about. Well, I mean, do you think that maybe our intellects are a maladaptation?

I mean, I can see why the ability to plan has an evolutionary value, right? I mean, you know, the ability to foresee things and make plans in the future can be incredibly important, especially for humans living in the savannah where food may be scarce and that sort of thing. Okay.

But do you think that having had that evolutionary purpose, that the beauty that has led to, that's led to art, literature, science, was a maladaptation ultimately, or just a... I don't know. We don't know how long that stuff's going to be around. Maybe not long. Yeah. Well, I think it'll be... But we both agree it'll be a long round longer than maybe...

than poetry, maybe. There's what is essentially a chapter of the book, which I really got a kick of, which is really reminding my book, The Great History of Total Tsofar, you give a great description of the development of the standard model of particle physics.

And the historical examples of the physics and the development standard model are bang on. And there's some aspects that I wanted to actually talk to you about that I think I may have a slightly different perspective on than you. So we talked about quarks, and I think I wanted to let you know that Dirac was the first person to come up, his example was the first time a particle had been invented.

Now we do it all the time. The tree knows and other things were later on and developed. We got a tradition of that, but it was a totally new thing in science for mathematics to propose something. A new particle existed, and it must have been terrifying. But before them, someone who proposed something that existed

that no one could really understand was Bolsman. And he eventually killed himself because people didn't understand that. People say Bolshek made suicide because he was so ill-treated by the physical community. But the truth is, Boltzman killed himself because he was suicidal. Yeah, well, I guess that's a true statement. Yeah, that's right.

But let me take you on that. In the book, you mentioned Aaron Fest, and the character asked, did Aaron Fest know Boltsman, but Aaron Fest was Bolshe was Bolshevant student. Did you know that? He also committed suicide. Exactly. He also committed suicide. And killed his son.

Do you know this story? It's a guy from Caltech, David Goodstein, wrote one of my favorite physics texts. It's not in my own area. It's on condensed matter physics. I think it's called states of matter. I can't remember. But the introduction is wonderful.

It's all about statistical mechanics, which Boltzmann created as a field. And it says, Bolsman created this field, and he committed suicide. Then his work was taken up by Aaron Fest. To work on this. And he committed suicide.

And then it says, now it's our turn to study. It's a great introduction. That's pretty funny. But now I want to get to quantum mechanics because you talk about it in an interesting way, you know, because quantum mechanics has spawned all of this philosophy that drives me nuts.

I know. It's pretty bad. In fact, you say, I love the way you say Kant's view of quantum mechanics, because, of course, Kant was a lot before quantum mechanics. You say his view as a quote is, that which is not adapted to our powers of cognition, which is really true. That's a quote.

from Kent. But not about quantum mechanics. No, well. About quantum mechanics to come. Yeah, quantum mechanics kind of he anticipated it. You know that Feynman, one of the things he said about,

you know, he was one of the first people talked about quantum computers, right, in later his life. And he said one of the reasons was he figured if a quantum computer which bases its processing on pure quantum processes might have a better intuitive

understanding of quantum mechanics than he did, and might therefore be able to explain it to him. Did you know what he said that? No, but that sounds right. Yeah, it sounds right. I mean, I think the point is we were classical beings and we can't intuit it quantum mechanics

and it has spawned. We talked about this at lunch, but I want to talk about it again, this whole notion, this misplaced notion, which I mentioned you, my old colleague, Sidney Coleman described beautifully, that this whole field of the interpretation of quantum mechanics has grown up, which is pure, in my mind, pure waste of words

because the world is not classical. Interpreting the quantum world in terms of classical world is ridiculous because the classical way. It's going the wrong way. As city said, you should talk to the interpretation of classical mechanics. Because the world is quite mechanical. And the fact that when you talk to quantum mechanics, like it's non-local or all these things,

it's only because you're enforcing, or are there many worlds interpretation? it's only because you're forcing a classical interpretation on something which isn't classical. That's exactly right. And then these people write books about it. Yeah, and then these people write books about it. I love the fact that you say

if there's anything wrong with the Copenhagen is that Bohr had read a lot of bad philosophy. It's true. Yeah, and I think he established that notion, the whole notion of complementarity and all the rest, which is, you know, sounds, and it's built up this whole mythology. There's more crackpot science and bad science been built up around quantum mechanics than any other area of physical.

Oh, without question. And people abuse it, of course, and make money off it like the secret and all of this nonsense. Because people try and impose. But as I say, philosophers, I mean, there are philosophers of quantum mechanics, and I'm sure they're doing good work. But what they may be, okay, you're not so sure. But my point is, and they get offended when I say physicists, it doesn't matter. to physicists. They don't even, they don't read it. No, of course not. And that's a true

statement whether or not it means we're Philistines or not. But you describe in here something which I wonder whether you learned from Murray about David Bohm who won the also won the Nobel Prize for describing

the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics ultimately. And you say David went to Einstein's office one day to explain to him to Einstein why Einstein's objections to quantum mechanics were wrong. When he came out, he lost his faith. Yeah, he lost his faith.

Is that true, and you want to explain that to me? I was fascinated. Is that a true story that you heard? Of course, everything I tell is true. Well, except for the things that aren't. I don't make things up. Except for the things that you do. Well, what did he mean by it?

He lost his faith in what? In quantum mechanics? Yeah, because Einstein didn't believe in it. Yeah, so Einstein convinced him? He went in there and spent an hour and a half talking to Einstein when he came out. He'd just written a fat, fat book about quantum mechanics. When he came out, he didn't believe in it either. Yeah, and then you say he spent the rest of his life trying to find a classical description that fit the theory,

which, of course, a lot of people have been misplaced. And you talk about hidden variables, the idea that there's something we can't see, that quantum mechanics is incomplete. It's weird, but it's only because we can't see it all. And you point out something I hadn't thought about. You say you can visualize hidden variables. That is you can visualize how they might work, sort of. You could draw a picture, but they don't work.

But the thing is you can't visualize quantum mechanics. So maybe the attraction to hidden variables is just the fact you can visualize them. Well, that's part of it, I think. Sure. And one of the nice things about the Nobel Prize this last year is that there went for, there are a number of experiments that you could show disprove the possibility of there being any classical description of quantum mechanical phenomenon. Oh, okay. I haven't followed it.

Yeah, yeah. And it was a bunch of, I mean, there were experiments that go way back. that go back to this thing called Bell's Inequality, which you may have heard of. No, I know I'm very familiar with Bell's inequality. But you know what? There's a much better inequality, and the person I mentioned, Sidney Coleman,

in this lecture called Quantum Mechanics in Your Face, describes it. Yeah. It's a much better inequality. That's much more dramatic where you can describe these experiments where if the world is classical, these experimenters will measure numbers

and their product will always be plus one. And in quality, quantum mechanics, the product will always be minus one. It's not as if there's just a slight difference between the two. It's as dramatic as you can be. And the experiments show plus one. I mean, minus one. They show quantum mechanics.

And it tells you that, you know, give up classical. No matter what you do. Yeah, the world isn't classical. Just get over it. And stop worrying about it. And just, as they always say, don't worry about it. Just calculate. Yeah, shut up and figure it.

Shut up and calculate, which is what my, my, my, thesis supervisor, my first thesis supervisor, I eventually left him, but he used to tell me I was thinking all the time. He said, don't think, just work. But in retrospect, I give him credit because if you're a graduate student, there's a temptation to want to know everything before you do anything. And it really gets in the way. And maybe it's true for writers, too. You realize you just have to find something and go ahead and do it. I want to move on. And by the way, I'm, I keep moving towards you because the sun is in my eyes.

So don't be intimidated. It doesn't only hear anything by it. But in the book, you really talk about the development of the standard model. And as I say, in a beautiful and wonderfully lucid and correct way. And one of the things your character says, or one of the characters says about it, is that they didn't believe, which I think is the father. He said, falling on the fact that Murray didn't, you know, didn't think of quarks as real. he thought the Higgs paper was too elegant.

Oh, too elegant to be wrong. Yes. And it's interesting that he had that reaction because my reaction of the Higgs is it was too elegant to be right. It just seemed like such a simple way for nature to solve this complicated problem that I was sure while the mechanism worked

that the Higgs itself as a particle was just... It's wrong. It had to be wrong. Nature must be doing something a little more fancy than that. I was shocked. that the Higgs, that the simplest possible way to describe the symmetry breaking that is so important that makes the world we live in, the world we live in was due to the Higgs. And I was convinced it was wrong.

Well, nature can take any path it chooses. Yeah, no, and I love, I mean, I love being wrong. But I remember when I was younger, I was convinced that, in fact, the mechanism was obviously right. I mean, the mechanism that Steve Weinberg developed and was first the, the, the, connect the mathematical connection that Shelley Glashow and Salam showed was obviously right. And so the mechanism that was described by this particle in nature called the Higgs must be right. But I thought there must be something else more of a fancy in the physics that would produce that mechanism. And I even worked on it for a while to produce a theory without a Higgs.

And it's interesting that when you say too elegant to be wrong, because that as we pointed out is a danger, Physicists often are deluded by thinking something is too elegant. I mean, I have had debates with my phrase of friends, but with Brian Green who wrote a book called The Elegant Universe, I think. And elegance doesn't, in some sense, while mathematical beauty drives some theoretical physics, physicists, elegance doesn't matter. Elegance doesn't matter at all.

It's what works that matters. That's true. A lot of, I don't know, The Chandra Sikar Yes? Said that Given any choice between picking something for its rigorousness Or for its beauty, he'd go with beauty.

Well, that's a dumb thing to say. You'd go with beauty. You don't go with either one. You go to the one that's right. The one that's right. And that's the one that nature adopts. And that's the difference between, as I said earlier, between a physicist and a mathematician.

I think the mathematician has a luxury of going for the beauty, but the physicist has to go with what nature does, whether you like it or not. And as a physicist who then watched a generation get in, well, let's talk about string theory, because you mentioned string theory here, that string theory, I think you say in the book, which is really true, it sort of just became, has become mathematics, but there was a generation of young physicists probably because of a big gap between experimental results that drove particle physics between the 1970s and maybe the discovery of the Higgs 50 years later

were driven by elegance to thinking that what mattered in physics and what should be important for career developments was developing elegant and complex mathematics, that that was what should be the thing that drives success in physics. Whereas, of course, a generation that had lived with the experimental discoveries of particle physics knew that what really should drive things is whether it works or not. That's right.

Did you talk to Murray about that issue? I don't know. We talked about everything, so I'm sure we did. But, you know, I was surprised that he was an early proponent. In fact, had actually made sure that Green, who was one of the developers of string theory, had a position at Caltech for years of actually a soft money position before the string revolution happened, and he became a full professor. But Murray had been the one that made him.

sure that he was still kept there because he thought it was, you know, Murray felt it was the next step beyond gauge theories of understanding nature. Yeah, until it, we saw what it actually was. Well, yeah, well, we don't know what it actually is. I think that's the problem. That's the same thing. And yeah, you talk about that. It's remarkable, sociologically, for always been remarkable for me. String theory initially required. 26 dimensions and then it went down to 11 dimensions and maybe 10 dimensions. And we'll talk about dimensions more in your character talks about.

It gives a great quote that I love about dimensions. That physicists, as you point out, one of the things that comes out of string theory right away, which is what suddenly caused the community to jump on it, is that what could be the possible quanta of gravity, the graviton, a zero mass spin two particle, automatically comes out of the theory. and therefore...

It's the first thing you see. Yeah, it's the first thing you see and in a world where quantum mechanics and gravity don't seem to work. A theory that automatically gives you what could be the quantum gravity is what suggests it's a theory of quantum gravity. But what is amazing, and I don't know if this

surprised you, but it surprised me, is that that realization alone was enough to cause a large fraction of the physics community to say, okay, yeah, all these extra dimensions exist that we can't measure. did that surprise you? I know more than a lot of things in physics surprise you

I mean physics is full of surprises without I mean it to me you know I mean it's a huge leap to acquire not just one extra dimension but maybe seven or initially you know yeah that's true. Yeah and and then say not only that they're there but we can't see them and we have to invent reasons why we can't see them.

You remember Feynman said about string theory? Feynman didn't like string theory. And he said it didn't predict anything. It had to just apologize. It had to explain, you know, apologize for why you couldn't see any of the aspects of the fundamental theory. Well, some people would leave the room if you mentioned string theory. Yeah, you mentioned that Sally Glashow would leave the room. Yeah.

He moderated his views at one point. But, you know, he once said to me, as I told you, I was a student, he was influential and later became a friend, had a profound impact on me as a physicist, given what we talked about, I was a mathematical, I did mathematical physics early on, and I was struggling. And I met Shelley. And what he told me was there's formalism and there's physics, and you have to know the difference. Okay, well, that's well said. It is well said. It had a profound impact.

Yeah. One of the things that Shelly, one of the things that made Shelley great besides his incredible creativity and also joviality was that he kept an incredible touch with experiment. Yeah, I guess that's true. And for him, that was incredibly important. He was able to sort of see experiments and then be the first one to propose an underlying model

that it may explain those experimental anomalies. And one of the reasons was not just because he was and creative, but because he kept his ear to the ground. He knew what were important experiments in some way before anyone else. It's really good. Okay. And so for him, string theory, that was why string theory was such an anathema. It's because it had no experimental grounding, nor did it make as far as he could see, any experimental predictions.

Yeah, it just seemed right. But we talked about lunch. Things, you know, your baby always looks beautiful to you, whether they're beautiful or not. And you have to guard against the easiest person to fool is yourself, as Feynman said. You have to guard against something that looks so beautiful, it must be right. Yeah, exactly. One of the things you talk about, but you really would have to be an aficionado to understand it. And I remember it's because I've talked to Murray about this,

is that many of the ideas of the standard model were anticipated by Strickleberg. And I first learned from, I didn't know about him, but Murray... Nobody knows about Sticholberg. Poor Stuckelberg. And Murray got man. Yeah. Whenever, and he was the one would always say, oh, yeah, that was, you know, that was already done by Stuckelberg. You should read Stubberg.

That's right. Does Marie the first one who sort of illuminate you know about that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I just came across him somewhere and he sounded really interesting. And guess what? He was.

He was. Yeah, yeah. He really was interesting. And it happens. Ultimately, you know, as you say in the book, and I think it's true that a lot. lot of these things get credited to other people. Yeah. And ultimately that, you know, it's not the end of the world because really what matters is who had the biggest influence on the way we think about the world. And sometimes

it's not the person who first had the right idea. That's well said, yeah. And, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I once, I developed a program in physics entrepreneurship. And there I learned the difference in good ideas and successful products. A lot of people have good ideas, but the people who become the well-known, the rich are the ones who actually know how to get them into the real world. And I think somehow, and for better or worse, the Nobel Prize, it's arbitrary because it's a prize,

but it's really for the people who have the impact on the world and change the way the world thinks. And Stuperberg may have the ideas, but it was others who sort of changed the way the community thinks. When it comes to extra dimensions, you have a great quote in the book, which I'll read. It says, you scribbled somewhere in the margins

that when you lose a dimension, you've given up all claims to reality, save for the mathematical. Because, again, one of the important things about string theory now, as it morphed, is that the notion of dimensions becomes kind of arbitrary. One person's four-dimensional world

or five-dimensional world can be an other person's four-dimensional world because of this thing called holography and everything else. I wonder if we could parse that statement. And if that's, again, the character or your thinking, when you lose a dimension, you lose, we've given up all claims to reality.

Well, it's just a simple statement about physical reality, about what it is. I mean, it has to have dimensions, or it's just an idea. But one of the things that physics tells us is that things that we think of as reality that are not really what they seem, like the fact that you and I are,

made of particles that have mass is just an accident of our circumstances. At a fundamental level, they're massless. It just happens. We live in a world that has this Higgs sea around us, and it causes things to behave in a way that's very different than they are. So massive particles and massless particles are really the same. It's just an accident of our circumstances. So physics causes us to realize that at a, oh, and quantum mechanics, that at a fundamental level, reality is not what we experience.

Okay. So it could be, and I'm willing to accept the possibility that while dimensions are vitally important to us and real, that they could be an illusion of our circumstances. Well, that opens up a larger view of things. I mean, our entire assessment of reality is just what we see in here. Yeah. And dimensions are incredibly important to it.

I have to say, for me, that's the biggest failure of string theory, really, is not the fact that it requires extra dimensions. But there's no explanation intrinsically of why the world that we experience is three-dimensional. Spatially four-dimension, if you include time. There's nothing in the theory that points to why the three dimensions we experience should be large, and you can walk through them and have a conversation in them. And there's nothing in the theory that points that out. It seems to be a complete accident.

Well, I don't think it's a complete accident. I mean, it says that there are only three ways you can shoot an arrow without crossing it. Yeah, but if we lived in a five-dimensional world, there'd be a lot of other ways to shoot an arrow. And so that was that statement, by the way, that Feynman said was the big flaw of Singh theory. It doesn't explain anything. It makes apologies because you have to say, String theory is based on the assumption that, yeah, there are a lot of extra dimensions, and they're very small, and the world we see is large, the three dimensions we see are large,

but why are those extra dimensions small? Theory doesn't tell you. I don't know. They're not really dimensions in the classical sense. Well, it could be, but there's something that distinguishes, very clearly distinguishes an 11-dimensional world from a world in which there are three dimensions that we can expect. Yeah, but I just don't think that the dimensions, the dimensions, the dimensions that are thrown in there to make it have these dimensions are like the three dimensions were familiar with. Three dimensions we're familiar with are very simple things.

Again, it's where you can shoot an arrow with that crossing one path over another. Well, we happen to live in the world in which we let most of us do, not all of us. But there's a great description in here you talk about here. And again, I can't help but read the words here, although they know your words, but they raise the issues that I want to talk about. Because we're never going to get in this ridiculous notion that somehow what you write down

has anything to do with what you happen to believe because that's something that people don't understand. And when they ever talk about it, it's best to close your ears. But this character says you will never know what the world is made of. The only thing that's certain is that it's not made of the world.

As you close upon some mathematical description of reality, you can't help but lose what is being described. every inquiry displaces what is addressed. And I found that really interesting, because again, it sort of says, if I read it correctly, and I can move away from the sun now, what we talked about before,

that there's a mathematical description of the world and there's the world, and they're not the same thing. No. Is that what you're trying to get out there? Well, no, it's a very plain, simple, statement. I mean... Well, a lot of people would say,

hmm, I don't know, it's... Like, the only thing that's certain is the world is not made of the world. I mean, it's true that the... What's clear, we now understand for quantum mechanics, is that the world is made of objects that are not the objects we experience. So at a fundamental level, the world

is not what we see. And I guess I kind of thought maybe that's what you were talking about there. Well, that and other things, yeah. What other things? Ah, I knew this. Yeah, it was a trap. Just, I don't know, it's a simple statement,

but if you think about it, it's hiding. It's hiding more than it revealed, I suppose. Yeah, the universe is hiding, and part of the job of science, and the joy for me is to discover what's hidden. Yeah, yeah. Does it amaze you that, I mean, sometimes I sit back, and it is amazing that here, on this remote,

planet in the middle of nowhere, these hominids, isn't it amazing that how much of the hidden universe, even in your lifetime and my lifetime, it's almost unfathomable how much of the hidden universe we can now know about, isn't it? Well, that's what Einstein said. He said it's what's really, what's really baffling is that the world is understandable.

Yeah, that itself is remarkable. that we can understand it at all. But, you know, I do astrophysics and cosmology, but I look up at the nice sky. And I know I work in this field where I know how many galaxies are and developments of dark matter, but isn't amazing with these little telescopes?

And we know not only the shape of our galaxy, but the galaxy, you know, millions of layers away or in some cases billions. We know large scale, the makeup of the universe. It still, it boggles my mind that we, And that's in less than 100 years, right? 100 years ago we knew of one galaxy. I want to come back as we get near the end here to this question

that we alluded to with science versus literature. You said at the very beginning, how can you not be fascinated by science? As if when I asked that question, like it was the most ridiculous question in the world. Okay. And I feel that way too, because I say that, how can you not be fascinating with science?

Did you ever read Jacob Bernowski? I used to love Jacob Bernowski. Yeah, I've really influenced me a lot. But he made some statement about, you know, it's not a game. You can't play this game. The world, science infiltrates the world through and through in every way. And it's not a game, and you just have to accept that it's real and whole. And that's incredibly important.

But the fact that we have to say that means we live in a world where most people don't have that appreciation at all. We're doing something wrong. Well, there's really nothing. There's really nothing that has improved our lives in the last hundred years. It's not based in science. In more than 100 years. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, all of everything that makes our lives the way it is is science. Yeah. And that's true even, you know, that's in a cultural sense true, I think, as well. It impacts on the, on the, it impacts on every aspect. of our culture as well as just the technology of science. But why don't more people think like you? I mean, the question is why we live in a society where science is something column B, and many people say it's just something I can't understand, it's not interesting,

yet they don't, you know, they may not like Picasso, but they don't say, I'm not an artist and therefore I won't be interested in it. Or I'm not a guitar player, and therefore I won't be interested in listening to or Clapton or whoever is your favorite guitar player. Yet in science, someone they say, well, I'm not a scientist, and therefore I don't have to be interested in it. And what can we do to change that?

I don't know. I don't want to as much you can do to change it. Most people are just not interested in anything. Well, I'm leading to a trap here. Okay. The trap is you've written a book in which science plays a key role, But you write the details of the standard model in here and other aspects of mathematics.

And what I love about it is you write it as if the reader should be able to appreciate this as if you were talking about Shakespeare or Milton or the Holocaust or anything else. Okay. I'm wondering if that's the way to do it, is to have the writers that we most appreciate and the musicians we most appreciate be willing to talk about science as if it's, of course I can talk about the standard model. Why wouldn't I be able to? So I'm wondering if, even though you say you don't know how to do it, I'm wondering if in writing this book in some ways you're not making, you're not contributing to the effort to somehow

convince people that they should be able to at least converse about this with some level of authority. I suppose some part of you wants people to have a better understanding of science and a better to feel a little bit warmer towards science than they probably do So there was some malice before that There was some intent to include that in this

Well, it's not the first intent It's not the first intent Yeah the first intent is to write a good story I think so That's what it should be, I agree But it's nice to see it It's the same thing as I talked about with the radio program

I did it with Werner. If people who are literary or film icons or whatever you want to call the word, talk about sciences. If it's course it's something I'd be interested in. Then it gives an example to others that, hey, you know, it's not so strange to be fascinated by this stuff.

Yeah, yeah. We talk about at lunch. Your son, like my daughter, is very musical. I love music. but I can't do it. I try as hard as I might. To me, I try and wonder what it's like to someone who can't do mathematics. It must feel the same. But the difference is it doesn't stop me from loving listening to it.

So what's that difference? I guess you can't just listen to mathematics so you can listen to music. Or you can go into an art gallery and just look and enjoy the art without knowing about them. Whereas with math, there's a somewhat higher barrier. In order to really appreciate it, there's some level you have to get to. Mathematics is, some people just don't understand it, and they will never understand it. Yeah, and I understand that, you know, people have a barrier.

But as I say that, but I think the thing that's important is it doesn't mean you can't talk about it and have some perspective of what it's about. and understand the questions you've always had like, you know, why are we here or how do we get here, are we alone in the universe and the kind of questions that everyone has about nature. Questions that have answers. Yeah, which they don't, the problem is

people don't realize those questions that fascinate them, as I said earlier, are really science. They think it's something else. They think it's theology, and they don't realize that the questions that they're all asking are science questions. Yeah. And somehow in our schools,

we don't do a good job of explaining kids that the questions and interest them are actually scientific ones. Yeah, and all kids are interested in the same questions. Why are we here? What's going on? Yeah. By the way, let's go back to the beginning. Did your teachers encourage your interest in science, or was school useful to you in that regard or not? No, I didn't get much at a school. Yeah, you're not the first person that's told me that.

A lot of people said they got interested in what they got interested in spite of their teachers. Largely true. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, and so you not have a teacher that encouraged you to science? Not until I got in college. In college, okay, and that was a big difference. But did they encourage you interest in science or in writing or what? I don't know, encouraged my interest in reading books. On reading books. Until then, you didn't read books much. No, I would, that's, they saw somebody

who liked to read books is why they were attracted. Okay, okay. So that's, so you always did like to read books? I'd read books when I was a kid and then as a I got older, I wanted to be one of the guys, and the guys didn't read books. So I didn't read books for a few years, and then I got back into books again. The guys took about cars and put them back together again. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it was a good, it was a good excursion. Yeah. Yeah, I wish I'd never had that, so I never got to do the car part. Well, the last thing I want to ask is a quote in the same, it's in the same paragraph. is that last quote. And you say, but above all, and lastly, the world does not know that you were here. Yeah.

And that's a one, of course, again, another wonderful phrase, but it's also a true phrase. It is, but most people don't feel that way. They feel it somehow rather their existence on the planet is, somebody has to know I'm here besides me. Yeah, the world,

We talked about, you know, I talked to you about my experience of touching that rock in Greenland, how I've been waiting for 8,000,000, 20 years for me to touch it. But it really wasn't, of course. But the realization the world does not know you're here, for some people, is incredibly terrifying. And for some people, it's incredibly depressing. And for others, I suspect like both me and you, it's exhilarating. Yeah, it's okay. I mean, the fact, because it means that, you know, there's no plan.

and you have this moment to experience the world, and you should take advantage of it. Yeah, yeah. And the fact that the world is not here, does not know you're here, I don't want to really go too far into this, but suggest that there's no divine plan, and you'll buy that, there's no divine plan for your being here. No, I'm not a big belief in divine plans.

Okay. Well, look, I think the willingness to accept that the world does not know we're here, and it doesn't revolve around us. And that if we're lucky, we get to experience the world and learn about it by looking outward is the key to science and the key to good literature, because literature, like yours, opens another kind of world for us to experience.

I can experience the world through your imagination. And so there's this real tie between the two. So the world may not care or know that you're here, but I do. And my life has been enriched by knowing you personally and being able to read you and I'm the luckiest person in the world to not just be able to read you, but to talk to you about it. And not more than that for you to agree to talk to me about it and trust you. So I want to thank you so much for spending it. Well, you're welcome. Thank you. It's been a joy as always and a privilege. And I'm so lucky that others will get to

hear it too. Thanks again. You welcome. I hope you enjoyed today's conversation. This podcast is produced by the Origins Project Foundation, a non-profit organization whose goal is to enrich your perspective of your place in the cosmos by providing access to the people who are driving the future of society in the 21st century and to the ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world. To learn more, please visit Originsprojectfoundation.org.