The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything by Michio Kaku
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Political Aesthetics

Michio Kaku wants to convince those of us who are not physicists that the cosmos is composed of very small vibrations. He starts with establishing the ancient pedigree of this idea and ends up explaining why these vibrations are the basis for not just Einstein’s famous E = mc squared, but also a unified theory of the four ‘forces’ of gravity, the strong and weak atomic forces, and electromagnetism. For Kaku, String Theory rules; he thinks it might even replace theology!

What I find most interesting about Kaku’s exposition is not the strength of the evidence he presents but the criterion he uses for evaluating this evidence, namely symmetry. In more technical terms, if an equation is “invariant under transformation,” Kaku considers it “beautiful,” and therefore scientifically superior to equations that are less symmetrical. In fact it is clear that what he considers evidential at all is determined by this criterion. Citing the early 20th century mathematician, G.H Hardy as a precedent, Kaku claims symmetry as the sole standard of proof in the arcane world of particle physics.

But even if one accepts Hardy’s mathematical aesthetic as definitive and applicable to all of science, Hardy did not define beauty in mathematics in terms of symmetry but in in terms of patterns of any sort. This is the passage Kaku quotes from Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology:

“A mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test; there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”

There are of course any number of patterns which are asymmetrical. In geometry, scalene triangles, parallelograms, and trapezia among many others have no symmetry. In nature, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks, and stripes are patterns but not symmetrical. The sponge and coral colonies are asymmetrical animals as are all gastropods such as snails and slugs. So to claim symmetry as the only form of beauty and therefore the criterion of good science seems more than prejudicial for the rest of Kaku’s argument. It is also a gross abuse of Hardy.

Kaku’s subtly self-serving distortions, in fact, appear as a consistent pattern throughout the book. Here are several examples:

“Ultimately, all the wonders of modern technology owe their origin to the scientists who gradually discovered the fundamental forces of the world.”

Except of course for the very unscientific steam engineers of the 18th century and the almost anti-scientific Edison and Bell for example. Then there is Kaku’s admiration for the Ancient Greek philosophers. Kaku apparently believes that inquiry about the natural world ended with the death of Aristotle:

“Darkness spread over the Western world, and scientific inquiry was largely replaced by belief in superstition, magic, and sorcery.”

Thus ignoring both the Greek superstitions and the rather impressive Roman projects in civil engineering as well as scientific astronomy, mathematics, and geography. Kaku then goes on to describe an idealised scientific enterprise free of nasty unscientific concerns:

“Isaac Newton is perhaps the greatest scientist who ever lived. In a world obsessed with witchcraft and sorcery, he dared to write down the universal laws of the heavens and apply a new mathematics he invented to study forces, called the calculus.”

Kaku’s hagiography of Newton is not only trivial but misleading. Newton was also a leading alchemist of his day, and spent more time investigating magic, prophecy and the secrets of the occult than he did on mathematical physics. Kaku goes on to subtly suggest that his choice of symmetry is really only ‘natural’:

“… that is why the Earth is spherical, rather than another shape: because gravity compressed the Earth uniformly.”

But the Earth is not spherical, it is an irregularly shaped ellipsoid whose shape changes continuously. And one final example of Kaku’s pattern of cutting to fit, his fatuous claim that

“… the existence of Newton’s gravitational forces was confirmed by subsequent observation.”

Subsequent observations did no such thing. Observers presumed there were forces and then showed they could be described in the way Newton had formulated. As we know now, gravitational forces simply don’t exist as Newton conceived them.

I know very little about the substance of String Theory or it’s relative merits over its rivals. But my mistrust of Kaku’s account grew as I encountered this more or less continuous stream of questionable claims in areas where I do have some knowledge. Based on prior probabilities therefore, I feel hesitant to accept his view as authoritative. Among other things, Kaku’s idolisation of symmetry looks suspiciously like the Ptolemaic idolisation of circular orbits. I find it difficult to ignore a lurking scientism in the background.

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