The Next Revolution in Physics
“Fun” might not be the first word that comes to mind when most people think of advanced physics and mathematics, but it seems to trip off the tongue of Anthony Aguirre every couple of minutes. Aguirre, the associate scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) and a professor of physics at UC-Santa Cruz, says he is excited about the “fun, diabolical questions” being asked by the scientists who were awarded grants by the Institute in July. Aguirre and Max Tegmark, FQXi's director and a professor of physics at MIT, hope that these researchers will help us to understand more about the ultimate nature of the universe. With support from the John Templeton Foundation, FQXi awarded $2.68 million this summer to support 33 different projects.
An expert review panel used a two-step process to choose the winners from 191 applications from 11 different countries. Among the grantees were Raphael Bousso, a professor at UC-Berkeley, for a project titled “Why Is the Universe Large?” ($60,000); Jonathan Dowling of LSU for work on “Quantum Measurement in the Timeless Universe” ($102,000); and Andrei Linde of Stanford for research on "Multiverse, Inflation, Life, and Probabilities" ($164,000). A. Garrett Lisi, an independent physicist recently profiled in the New Yorker for what he refers to as his “exceptionally simple theory of everything,” was awarded $77,000.
Hyung Choi, a mathematical physicist and expert consultant to the Templeton Foundation, says that “the list contains many of the world's most creative physicists and philosophers of physics. Their work aims to solve truly big questions.” The four-year FQXi project, which runs until the end of 2009, has now awarded approximately $5 million in grants in two phases, as well as a number of mini-grants for travel, lecture programs, workshops, and other small projects initiated by FQXi members.
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Several of the grants given out in July fall under the heading of what Aguirre calls "category physics," research that tries to provide a “more general mathematical structure than the basic one in current use.” As he points out, there is a history of such advances in physics: “Einstein could never have developed the theory of relativity entirely on his own because he didn’t have the mathematics,” according to Aguirre. He had to draw on the framework established by the German mathematician Georg Riemann. The potential for discoveries in category physics is extraordinary, Aguirre believes, “as great as when we finally understood that space-time is curved.”
Another major area of research in the current round of FQXi grants concerns the subject of cosmological inflation. “The universe expanded fast and then stopped to give birth to the big bang," Aguirre explains. "But it’s been known for quite some time that, in most models, there were many big bangs.” This leads to the idea that there may be more than one universe, or a “multiverse.” There are “deep and thorny questions” about how to test this notion, Aguirre says, and some FQXi grantees are addressing them. Other projects deal with the nature of gravity, and some of the researchers are even trying to figure out why time travel seems to be impossible.
The declared mission of FQXi is “to catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.” As Hyung Choi explains, few of the FQXi projects would receive funding in their current form from, say, the National Science Foundation because "they push the boundaries of physics in a more metaphysical and philosophical direction.”
Some of the grantees, like A. Garrett Lisi, do not even work in traditional institutions. As Aguirre says, “there are people who are capable of doing interesting work but who aren’t part of the establishment. They deserve attention and support too.” Part of the funding from the Templeton Foundation is being used to form a network of scientists who are interested in these kinds of questions. In 2006, the group met in Iceland, and there is another conference planned for the summer of 2009.
To continue to identify new areas for research and more potential researchers, FQXi has also just launched a $50,000 essay contest. The Institute will award as many as 21 prizes of up to $10,000 for original work discussing “The Nature of Time.” As Max Tegmark explains, “Over the past century, scientists have discovered how the universe evolved, and they have revolutionized our understanding of the nature of space and time, matter and energy. We’re delighted to help give them a crack at new big questions, and to see what they find.”
The Axial Age
In early July, 21 prominent scholars from a wide range of fields—neuropsychology, sociology, religion, political economy—gathered at the University of Erfurt in Germany to discuss what the German philosopher Karl Jaspers famously called "the Axial Age." With major support from the Templeton Foundation, the conferees explored this crucial period of the first millennium BC (roughly 800 to 200 BC) when four different regions of the world underwent major transformations in how human beings thought about existence. Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and Western monotheism and philosophy took root during this time.
Participants in the conference included the American sociologist Robert Bellah, the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, and the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, winner of the 2007 Templeton Prize. They were asked to discuss not only the social and scientific causes of the age, but also to compare that time with our own. Titled “The Axial Age and Its Consequences for Subsequent History and the Present,” the gathering was a departure from previous academic conversations on the subject because it included many scholars who are not specialists in one of the four regions (India, China, Greece, Israel) that experienced the transformation.
As Bellah, one of the conference’s organizers, explained (echoing Jaspers himself), “ours is also a time of great social and cultural change and disruption," and we have a need "for new common understandings," not just of particular regions but of "the world as a whole." Many of the most intractable contemporary problems, like the "clash of civilizations” currently facing the West, have their roots, Bellah noted, in the Axial Age. An abridged version of his keynote talk can be found on The Immanent Frame, a blog sponsored by the Social Science Research Council.
Democracy-Building 101
The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up by Don Eberly has been chosen as one of this year's "Books That Drive the Debate" by the National Chamber Foundation, the educational arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to a grant from the Templeton Foundation, Eberly has been able to bring his ideas to a wider public.
Eberly, the founder of the Civil Society Project, argues that the development of democratic institutions depends critically on the creation of civic cultures that promote democratic values. This requires contributions from both the public and the private sectors and also the enlistment of the poor as partners in their own development. Past reliance on top-down bureaucracy and policy specialists, he shows, has given way to citizen-led strategies for curing poverty, creating entrepreneurial opportunity, and advancing freedom abroad.
Arthur Rothkopf, Senior Vice President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, interviewed Eberly about his book on September 10th. A video of their exchange can be seen here.
