Product Description

In a recent New York Times profile, James Glanz remarked, "Steven Weinberg is perhaps the world's most authoritative proponent of the idea that physics is hurtling toward a 'final theory,' a complete explanation of nature's particles and forces that will endure as the bedrock of all science forevermore. He is also a powerful writer of prose that can illuminate--and sting...He recently received the Lewis Thomas Prize, awarded to the researcher who best embodies 'the scientist as poet.'" Both the brilliant scientist and the provocative writer are fully present in this book as Weinberg pursues his principal passions, theoretical physics and a deeper understanding of the culture, philosophy, history, and politics of science.

Each of these essays, which span fifteen years, struggles in one way or another with the necessity of facing up to the discovery that the laws of nature are impersonal, with no hint of a special status for human beings. Defending the spirit of science against its cultural adversaries, these essays express a viewpoint that is reductionist, realist, and devoutly secular. Each is preceded by a new introduction that explains its provenance and, if necessary, brings it up to date. Together, they afford the general reader the unique pleasure of experiencing the superb sense, understanding, and knowledge of one of the most interesting and forceful scientific minds of our era.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122571 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 306 pages

Amazon.com Review
Steven Weinberg isn't ashamed of science. Of course, as a Nobel winner in physics, he does have emotional capital invested in the enterprise, but most of his arguments are sound and compelling. Facing Up is a collection of his essays, written over 15 years, celebrating and defending mainstream science. Rising up against the cultural critics who insist that science is essentially politics or even imperialism dressed up in a white coat, he is patient and eloquent as he explains how their misreadings of scientific literature and their own preconceptions guide their reasoning. From mildly wonkish to endearingly passionate, his writing engages the reader's full attention regardless of cultural affiliation. Science lovers will adore Weinberg's unabashed boosterism, while skeptics can try to rise to his challenge. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Winner of the Nobel prize for physics in 1979, Weinberg will be well known to science buffs for his book The First Three Minutes and to a wider readership for his frequent essays in the New York Review of Books. He is one of the foremost proponents of reductionism, "the explanation of a wide range of scientific principles in terms of simpler, more universal ones." He has also been a major figure in the so-called science wars, arguing against writers like Derrida and Latour who question the objective character of scientific knowledge and maintain that cultural factors influence the nature of scientific discoveries. This collection of 23 essays dating from 1985 to 2001 will probably have only limited appeal because Weinberg never ventures too far beyond a few recurring topics: reductionism, the Big Bang and inflation in the early universe, and the problems of introducing culture as a variable into science. While not a Johnny One Note, he might justifiably be called a Johannes Leitmotif; some contrasting themes, along with a wider field of references and analogies, would have made the collection much more compelling. Yet he is quite adept at explaining complex concepts clearly to the general public, as in the magisterial essay "The Great Reduction: Physics in the Twentieth Century," and those readers who do pick up the book should be sure not to miss his controversial assault on paradigm shifts, "The Non-Revolution of Thomas Kuhn."

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American
Weinberg's thesis in these essays is that the laws of nature, insofar as they are known, "are impersonal, with no hint of a divine plan or any special status for human beings." Each essay, he says, "struggles with the necessity of facing up to these discoveries." Weinberg is an eminent physicist-sharer of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin-who some 20 years ago started speaking and writing on broader subjects, notably "on the follies that I found in the attitudes toward science of many sociologists, philosophers, and cultural critics, and on the ancient tension between science and religion." The 23 pieces gathered here, learned and deftly written, are among the results of that undertaking.

Editors of Scientific American

Customer Reviews

Defending science
This collection of twenty-three essays by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist are drawn from various publications and talks that Professor Weinberg has given over the last few years. The subjects range from defenses of reductionism and Zionism to spats with social constructionists (including his essay on the Sokal Hoax), to debates about the history of science and the prospects for utopia to the anthropic principle and final theories in physics. They have in common, besides Weinberg's well-mannered and modest (but not self-deprecating) prose, a belief in the advancement of scientific knowledge, and a criticism of mysticism, religion and ignorance. I found myself in substantial agreement with Weinberg on almost every subject, and in admiration of his measured, fair and very wise expression.

In the essay, "Confronting O'Brien" (that's the O'Brien of Orwell's 1984), Weinberg makes it clear where he stands on the possibility of two plus two equaling five, or on the so-called "strong" social constructionist view of scientific knowledge. He writes that while "there is no such thing as a clear and universal scientific method", nonetheless, "under the general heading of scientific method" there is "a commitment to reason...and a deference to observation and experiment," and "Above all...a respect for reality as something outside ourselves, that we explore but do not create." (p. 43)

In the chapter, "The Non-Revolution of Thomas Kuhn," Weinberg writes that "the task of science is to bring us closer and closer to objective truth." It is here that I demur. I think it would be better to say that science more and more allows us to better manipulate the environment to our advantage (or disadvantage!) and to see further into that environment--to smaller phenomena, more distant objects, and more clearly into the past and the present--rather than to speak of "objective truth," which in this context is little different from "ultimate truth," or a "final theory of everything." The dream of "objective truth" is the dream of religion and is anathema to Weinberg's sentiments elsewhere in the book. Note, however, that he carefully writes, "closer and closer to objective truth." That's a nice qualification, but I think he should have qualified the notion of "objective truth" as well.

But Prof. Weinberg is not without the means for having fun with his listeners and readers. He writes on page 87 from a talk to the National Association of Scholars about the scientific method, that "There is one philosophic principle that I find of use here...[that] there is a kind of zing--to use the best word I can think of--that is quite unmistakable when real scientific progress is being made." Clearly he is playing with the notion of a "philosophic" principle. Indeed, on the last page of the book he confesses, "I don't believe it is actually possible to prove anything about most of the things (apart from mathematical logic) that they [philosophers] argue about."

Proving that he is not hopelessly locked into a finite but unbounded universe, he notes several times in the book that the universe may be infinite; indeed one of the chapters is entitled, "Before the Big Bang." He also writes, "Chaotic inflation has in a sense revived the idea of a steady state theory in a grander form; our own Big Bang may be just one episode in a much larger universe that on average never changes." (pp. 176-177)

Weinberg's sense of humor is rather dry. While scolding journalists for writing that the Big Bang theory is unraveling, he observes (p. 175), "Journalists generally have no bias toward one cosmological theory or another, but many have a natural preference for excitement." Or, his take off on Kuhn's repeated and grandiose use of the word "paradigm" (after noting a paradigm shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian physics): "Now that really a paradigm shift. For Kuhn it seems to have been the paradigm of paradigm shifts..." (p. 204)

Also: "Any possible universe could be explained as the work of some sort of designer. Even a universe that is completely chaotic...could be supposed to have been designed by an idiot." (p. 232) Or (same page), "The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather."

Weinberg's critique of religion takes no prisoners. He writes (p. 241), "...on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful." He adds, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil--that takes religion." (p. 242) He got a lot of flak for that, but considering the situation in the Middle East, his words seem prescient, although he was merely glancing back at history.

My favorite essays are the ones on the argument from design, the critique of Thomas Kuhn's thought, and the chapter on utopias. In the first he makes a neat distinction between anthropic reasoning that is "mystical mumbo jumbo," and that which is "just common sense." (p. 238) In the latter, while denigrating the prospect of a technological utopia, he writes that a world without work, a world in which people instead pursue the arts, science, etc., would be unsatisfactory (actually he mentions "general misery") because "there is only so much new literature...only so much new music," etc. to see and hear, and with so much competition, our work would get but scant notice. I really didn't understand this because people will make work where there is none, even if it is only working on their psyches and those of their friends, their bodies, etc. And besides, where is the end of exploring and of learning? Furthermore, the real joy is in the doing, not in the being noticed.

Perhaps this reveals part of Steven Weinberg's personality to us. He is a man who has done the very best work while being noticed at the highest level. What he writes is very much worth our time and consideration.

A showdown with the enemies of science
This is a collection of essays, speeches, and reviews written by Steven Weinberg during 1987-2000. This inevitably means that there is a fair amount of repetition if you read the whole book. On the other hand all are clear and well written as usually is the case with Weinberg. They are also carefully argued and persuasive. The topics that Weinberg dwells on are the reasons why the superconducting supercollider should have been built, why reductionism is good (and what it is), scientific method and history, Thomas Kuhn's paradigm change view of scientific revolutions, Sokal's hoax, and the postmodernist views of science. Weinberg argues that the only real revolution in the history of science is that brought about by Newton when Aristotelian physics was crushed. After that science has evolved in such a way that new theories have included the older ones as limiting cases. The ideas that scientific knowledge should be social constructions are carefully shown to be nonsense. The book is enjoyable and does not avoid controversy. Weinberg states in the book that: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion". This has, of course made many angry, but Weinberg indicate by several examples from history how this, in fact, is so. Buy it and read it!

Made me smile and laugh out loud
I just graduated from UT in 2002, I've seen Weinberg once and have heard many stories about him. None of the stories are positive with the possible exception that he is too smart for his students to understand (although there is a quote in his book that shows he's been trying to improve "It never was true that only a dozen people could understand Einstein's papers on General Relativity, but if it had been true, It would have been a failure of Einstein's, not a mark of his brilliance." This is on page 141 responding to an extremely funny quote from a deconstructionist). I've read his Discovery of Subatomic Particles and The First Three Minutes. They were okay readings with good information especially the former. I thought I'd give him another try with Facing Up. I was pleasantly surprised of how funny he is. The humor is dry, but I couldn't help smiling and sometimes laughing at some of his comments about philosophers and religious leaders. Maybe this is because I agree with him; I can imagine someone getting mad at some of the things he says. In any case, this book really makes you think about some philosophical issues relating to science and its value to us.