Cao Tianyu: Will Einstein still be a hero of physics in 2050?

This article is a report on the author at the 22nd International Science History Conference in 2005 (theme of the conference "Globalization and Diversity").

Written article | Cao Tianyu (Professor of the Department of Philosophy of Boston University)

Translation | Su Junbin

In 1905, Einstein was a hero in the field of physics. He was recognized as a heroic contribution to the theory of quantum theory, the theory of relativity, and the brown movement. Although that year, this recognition has not yet come: he is still a low -level clerk of the Swiss Patent Office. But admitting that it was coming soon. People are sure to claim that Einstein has been recognized as the greatest hero of physics in the 20th century, or even the greatest scientist of the 20th century. The conference itself proves that the theme of the conference given by Yang Zhenning at the opening ceremony is Einstein. In the sense of completing Einstein's underestimated cause, that is, the establishment of a unified understanding of the physical world, Yang Zhenning looked at him as the heir of Einstein, and many other physicists also looked at him like this. There were several conferences on Einstein's speech on this conference. I did not fully count how many articles about Einstein were submitted to this conference. In any case, there is no need to repeat this non -controversial claim. So, by 2050, how will Einstein's status in physics nice? This is the topic I want to talk about now.

The theme of the general conference is globalization and diversity. In an important sense, globalization will inevitably lead to homogeneity. Through translation and dissemination, Einstein is not only Germany or Switzerland, or Europe, or the United States, or Western heroes. In China, in India, in Brazil, he is also regarded as a hero, a real global hero. Since no one can have any way to prevent the globalization process in different fields of human behavior, this means that by 2050, the world will be more homogeneous than it is now, and this seems to be more homogeneous, and this seems to be a answer to my question. A answer that made my conversation incompatible.

But is there a variety of? People will answer: cultural diversity, maybe; economic and political diversity, no! This is the concept of the end of history. I don't believe in the topic of the end of history. I don't think the existing, diverse economic and political structures will conquer a homogeneous structural model through the conquest of the Anglo-Saxon model to the world. But this is not a proper place to discuss this issue, so let me go to another question: Is science a part of culture? of course. However, some people will be vigilant and argued that even if science is a part of culture, it is also a part with the greatest universality and global characteristics in culture; it is completely different from other parts of culture, such as religion or moral teachings, or It is artistic to express human emotions or reflect on survival dilemma (Existeential Dilemma); this part of culture, even in the era of globalization, if they are strong enough to fight against the conquest of American popular culture, they may still maintain a variety of existence forms Essence But is science really different from other parts of culture? Why?

You may have to protest: All these are clichés! Tell us what does this have to do with Einstein? Row! The relationship seems to be skinny, but it is not. First of all, let me point out a parallel relationship: globalization and diversity are on one side, symmetry and symmetry, and there is a parallel relationship between the two sides. Both sides of parallel relationships are metaphorical supporting each other. If we remember the ultimate source of cultural ideas and scientific creativity (think of Darwin's borrowing of Marsas's economic principles), it is not only a prototype of the conceptual framework, but also a kind of style of Reasoning of An Era), this thinking style indicates the way people perceive and think about the world in that era.

Therefore, on the one hand we find that the more global human activities, the more diversity of its activities (not only in the cultural field, but also in the political and economic field: think about the political and economic development models of China, Russia, and India) On the other hand, we also find that the greater the symmetrical or unified coverage area, the greater it is, the more people want to find and always find more symmetry. The Sri Lower and search for Higgs particles); then we may make a more correct evaluation of the deep contact between science and culture.

After determining the basis of using the era of globalization as the basis for evaluating Einstein, we now discuss the main topic of Einstein.

What is Einstein's most important and lasting contribution to physics? Einstein has made many contributions to physics. These contributions are great, revolutionary, and they have profound historical significance. There is no argument about this. However, most of his contributions have been hidden in the background, and few people will really help Einstein to guide their research. Of course, Professor Martin Klein will argue that Einstein's concept of light quantity is great and revolutionary. But what about Haisenburg, Xue Dingzheng and Dirac? Similarly, Einstein's solution to atoms is great. But what about similar solutions to those who created quantum dynamics (QCD, Quantum Chromodynamics)? My judgment is that if Einstein has made all other contributions, but there is no discussion and a certain success on symmetry and unity, and then advocate this discussion that it is worth engaged in because of the lofty goal, then Einstein will not The imagination of the 20th century and so far so far, it is impossible to be regarded as a scientific idol worthy of worship. Einstein eventually unified the mechanics and electrodynamics with Pengalmia's symmetry; he also used general coordinating or differentorphism invariance. Tie. But Einstein cannot unify gravitational and electromagnetic force. For him, this is a sad story and even a tragedy: In order to realize the unified dream, this genius has dedicated his last 30 years and energy without achieving any real achievements. But his thoughts were there. The idea inspired others to continue. Yang Zhenning and Robert L. Mills took the torch and held it to move forward. The pursuit of unity has entered a new stage and the stage of standard models. The standard model is amazing. But no one knows how to make the standard model a truly unified theory. Yes, weak interaction and electromagnetic interaction can be treated in a unified way. But how can we unite the quantum dynamics and electrical weakness theory of describing strong interaction? No one knows. The torch was then stringed theorist, especially Edward Witten, and took over. The pursuit of unified hero style continues, but the progress of claiming is quite suspicious in my opinion.

You can say that some success is still successful. But I have more severe criticism of this pursuit.

First of all, any discussion of unity is usually carried out by exploring increasing symmetricity. However, if there is no corresponding discussion on symmetry, then the discussion of unity is only very limited in deepening our understanding of the physical world, although it may provide us with some beautiful mathematical construction. One of the most convincing and most beautiful aspects of the theory of electricity is its Higgs mechanism. Without the Higgs mechanism, we will only guess and have no physical theory. I said that there is no physical theory that we have no theoretical means to process the data that may be obtained in the experiment.

Secondly, uniform discussion is preset and contained the original theory. The pursuit of restoration is worthy of respect. Without restoration, what happened at a level cannot be explained from the deeper level. But the pursuit of restoration must be supplemented with background knowledge (Knowledge of the Context). Only in a specific background, the behavior of lower -level entities can lead to the emergence of higher -level events. These background knowledge usually cannot be restored as knowledge that involves only lower -level physical behaviors. Instead, it is usually related to the overall characteristics of a specific structure of lower -level components. In other words, if there is no overall knowledge related to the background, only restore knowledge is not enough to provide causal explanations at any level. The more serious problem of restoration theory is that the lower -level knowledge caused by "decoupling" may have nothing to do with higher levels of knowledge. The phenomenon that happened at the level of Quick Jiaozi was very rare or no impact on the chemical level. In terms of understanding higher levels of physical behavior, the deserted viewpoint sets a serious limit on whether the restore knowledge is related: the behavior of these higher -level entities is mainly specified by its background. Of course, if restoring knowledge can supplement the overall knowledge of the background that is about higher -level entities in it, it is still useful for understanding the composition of higher -level entities. It should be pointed out that dehydration is not related to symmetrical breaking. In fact, the boundary of deserted coupling is usually set by the quality scale of the particles that cause symmetry.

Third, restoration and unity involve different energy scale. One of the most attractive features of unity and restoration is that physics between different scale is interconnected. This connection can even be described with mathematical reorganization groups. But a deep problem here appeared: physics within one scale is usually different from physics within another scale. Therefore, the connection of the reorganization group description itself cannot be used to avoid understanding the arduous mission of the world level structure of the material. Moreover, if we can move arbitrarily along the two directions of the re -emulsion group, then the entity on which scale is basically an irreplaceable problem than the entities at other scale. This situation is not good for restoration theory. All these are progress in high energy physics in the late 20th century. What do they do with Einstein? Answer the following. The above discussion has clearly showed that Einstein's concept resources are very limited. His main guidance concept is unity and symmetry. In addition to only words and unprepared ideas, Einstein lacks in -depth understanding of symmetry and lacks. At least it does not pay enough attention to its importance. It is certain that he does not know how to understand it. How to discover the mechanism of its implementation. Of course, this is not his fault, this is the limitations of his era. Physics was not mature at that time enough to understand the importance of symmetrical breaking and exploring its meaning. Nevertheless, the above discussion is sufficient to show that Einstein's concept resources, even for high -energy physics in the late 20th century, have been difficult to apply. Similar conclusions can also be derived from the limitations of (related to background knowledge, deserted coupling, and reorganization group). In short, it can be said that Einstein is really amazing, because he left us a pursuit of uniform heritage with symmetrical methods; but for some cutting -edge physicists, Einstein's legacy is obviously not enough to use Because he has not provided any guidance in understanding the differences: only under the guidance of the concepts of symmetry, deserted coupling, and reorganization, people can understand the differences, and all these concepts are in love In addition to Stein's vision.

In terms of the thinking style of the era of globalization (maybe it may last 2050 or even more than 2050), we can say that Einstein is a cultural symbol of homogeneity rather than diversity in globalization. After confirming this, people can give Einstein's status in 2050 according to their position and preference. The status of Einstein in 2050 depends on the relative power between the homogeneity and diversified forces in globalization: because these forces will restrict people's interests or pursue unity, Or pursue diversity.

We can also use a more physical way, rather than based on the grand thinking style to speculate on Einstein's position in future physics.

First of all, it should be pointed out that only to summarize Einstein's achievements according to the principle of symmetry and unity, it will cause misleading and illusory. The so -called Einstein heritage expressed by these principles is just the social construction of some high -energy physicists in the late twentieth century. These physicists want to use Einstein's prestige to serve the goal of building their own unified theory of all things. In fact, Einstein's achievements in physics mainly come from his response to the progress of physics as an empirical science; this response also expresses his commitment to his epistemology of emphasis on emphasis on emphasis on emphasis. Of course, he wanted to understand the inherent impulse of physical phenomena with a general concept, and also started a role in his unique understanding of his own understanding. In any case, if there is no rapid development of electric power, it is difficult to imagine how he can develop light quantum theory and narrow theory. Even in the typical example of the so -called Einstein heritage of the theory of relativity, when Einstein and many followers claim that there is no experience input as the basis, only the pure rational pursuit of universal principles has led to a broad theory of relativity theory of relativity The discovery is not consistent with the actual situation. In terms of its physical essence, the true achievements of the general theory of relativity are to make the space -time structure as a manifestation of physical power, so that the space -time structure has dynamic characteristics. And this discussion is possible because Einstein was guided by an outstanding physicist and empirical philosopher Ernst Mach. According to Mach's thoughts, inertia is not the attribute of the space itself, but depends on the distribution of material. In fact, in the early days of general relativity, Einstein himself repeatedly confirmed that the father of the spirit of general relativity was Mach, and Mach could have discovered the general theory of relativity in the general sense of relativity for decades before him. Mach has no concept of symmetry. He is only concerned about physical strength, but this care is the gravity of Einstein that has spattered the space -time structure.

Secondly, in a strong sense, we can assert that Einstein's thinking is still limited to the paradigm of Newtonian mechanics. What I want to say here is that what he considers is space, time, strength and field. Of course, when he applied (handling collective behavior) balance and rise in the rise, he also touched thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. However, Einstein did not seriously want to understand the mechanism of collective behavior, or to understand the nature of the collective behavior (such as the heat rise and fall) of the law (such as the a single physical behavior in the collective) status. Similarly, although Eintein has made important contributions to clarifying the special statistical nature of quantum physics, his name is closely connected with a special quantum statistics (Big Einstein statistics). However, his theoretical commitment still uses classic physics language such as Newtonian mechanics to describe physical phenomena. Therefore, in terms of physical concept, Einstein did not leave any heritage to understand the nature and laws of the behavior of small basic entities in quantum physics. On the other hand, he did not understand how the complex structure of the complexity of the quantum nature was reflected from the collective behavior of a single entity. What Einstein is left to us is actually just a more refined (handling space, time, force, field, and decisive single entity) Newton framework.

Considering the attention of physicists who are active in cutting -edge research today (symmetry breaks, the emergence of complex structure, etc.), and assume that these attention will not be successfully restored because of the success of quantum mechanics to restore quantum mechanics. By the result of classical mechanics, or completely restore the complex structure to the result of the result of a single physical behavior), it can be disappeared, then it can be quite sure that by 2050, Einstein will hidden the background in physics, not the theory of theory, and no longer the theory of theory. Super heroes on the frontier of physics and physics. Of course, Einstein will definitely be a hero in physics, just like Cairple, Galileo, or Newton is still the first hero in physics, but by then, Einstein is unlikely to be again again As Yang Zhenning or Witen asserted, he continued to provide a guiding spirit for the basic research of physics.

In the United Nations proposal to be a physics year and its symbolic figure is of course Einstein this year, I am unwilling to make such an offensive prophecy at Einstein at the conference that Einstein is worshiped this time as a hero. But I was encouraged from Richard Feynman. When Ferman once was in a similar situation to prediction in the future, he said that predictions are actually not as dangerous as empiricals envisioned. These empiricalists argued that your prediction cannot be confirmed. But in fact, if you remember the teaching of Karl Popper, you will feel very safe. If your prediction involves a distant future, then no one in your audience will be able to falsify your prediction. Perhaps, in 2050, it is enough to make anyone here be unable to prove my prediction. Thanks!

This article was originally included in the 6th Issue 6, 2005.

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