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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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CBC Ideas has a pretty good podcast series called How to Think About Science. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin was on talking about his book, The Trouble With Physics. The book and the talk both provide a nice analysis of the current political and funding structures that have put string theorists in the majority of gainfully employed physicists, even though string theory still hasn't generated any experimental evidence.
Quote from the podcast: Nobody has been able to extract anything that is what we call falsifiable, that is, if it's not seen then the theory is wrong. And this has just never happened before in the history of physics. As radical as general relativity was, even before Einstein had it in final form he knew what the key experiments were. ... He had several predictions that could be done with the technology of the time within two years, three years. Same thing with special relativity, same thing with quantum mechanics, same thing in every successful instance in the history of physics. The experimental check comes right away. There's always the contact with nature. It's very easy to invent mathematical structures, mathematical games that make no contact with reality. But a situation where some thousand, very gifted, very highly placed people in the most elite places in the world, passionately believe in something and have worked on it for two decades without a hint of how to test it experimentally, that's unlike anything that's ever happened before in the history of physics.Also, Smolin had some really nice things to say about Toronto.
Quote from the podcast: I have the impresion that science is part of the front of culture as culture evolves, and culture progresses and those of us who are at the front — scientists, artists, social theorists, architects, so forth — have a lot to say to each other. That maybe we lose out with the over-specialization and departmentalization. And there are venues for that conversation. Some of them are conferences, some of them are friendships, some of them are cities. A city is a venue for conversation, that's what they're for. As a New Yorker who moved to Toronto, I'm pretty excited about Toronto, that is, the people I meet here from theatre, films, music, writers, people in technology, people in politics. Toronto is more like New York than it is like London or Paris. It's a more open accessible city. You can be in Paris forever and never meet anyone who does anything different from you. Whereas in New York, once you're somehow in New York, you are continually meeting people who do something other than you, and Toronto is like that as well. I think I'm in a very lucky position because I've been fortunate enough to be able to write books as part of this community.
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