askchapo

"Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit is a very refreshing critical look at how the fad string theories came to be and what future progress might look like. The first half of the book is a history of the Standard Model with focus on the interaction between progress in mathematics and physics. This in itself is pure gold since it gave me a better understanding of what theoretical physicists are even looking for right now. The other half is about how the search for "the" M-theory or string theory has been derailing progress in theoretical physics for the past decades. In the end it's pretty much capitalism ruining science by providing an environment where nobody risks diverging from the mainstream anymore because they otherwise would miss out on funding.