Popular Science has been Replaced by Spiritualism
Posted on July 24, 2008
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“. . . String theory has to confront this same problem. We have to curl up these unwanted higher dimensions into a tiny ball (a process called compactification). According to string theory, the universe was originally ten-dimensional, with all the forces unified by the string. However, ten-dimensional hyperspace was unstable, and six of the ten dimensions began to curl up into a tiny ball, leaving the other four dimensions to expand outward in a big bang. The reason we can’t see these other dimensions is that they are much smaller than an atom, and hence nothing can get inside them.”
It’s official: popular science has become a joke.
The above excerpt is taken out of Michio Kaku’s 2005 best-selling book, “Parallel Worlds.” Michio Kaku makes a pretty good living telling people awe-inspiring tales of what might our reality mean. They may be popular, but they ain’t science anymore, that’s for sure. It reads more like a paragraph from Genesis.
Gone is critical thinking. Gone is the down-to-earth approach taken by older books. Gone are the sensibilities shown in, say, Gamow’s 1-2-3-infinity. Explanations? Forget about them. We’ve got cutesy analogies now. What do you mean, you don’t understand why the universe has 10 dimensions? It’s just like a balloon. You fill it with hot air. It goes up. Then you stick a needle in it. It pops. Then you go eat some popcorn. Yep, haven’t you heard? Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get inside. Although the wild guess “chocolates” might not be far off the mark.
Having skimmed Kaku’s book I can say with utter certainty there is nothing in its style that differentiates it from any other pseudo-scientific manifest. Big words and professional jargon are injected at every turn to make the reader feel small (compactification? What on earth is that word doing in there? And why should we care about it?). The reader is fed a long list of metaphors about the universe and what it’s made of, which he can’t hope to even relate to. So detached are the things described in the book from reality that no reader, no matter how intelligent, can hope to understand. A person reading the book can only gawk in amazement while drooling and uttering, “mmmm … ten dimensions … ” in a Homer-Simpson-ish sort of way.
Popular physics has been replaced by mysticism.
Michio Kaku has definitely been leading the assault with such marvelous titles as “Hyperspace: a Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes” and he is definitely not alone. He was preceded by Hawking’s infamous “A Brief History of Time”, a title surpassed in its absurdity only by Kaku’s own ridiculously titled “Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel.”
Can you tell I’m ticked off?
And why shouldn’t I be? Popular physics has been made synonymous with the universe, the meaning of life and the origins of times, with some aliens thrown in for good measure. I can’t blame the authors for it all, though. People are gulping it down like madmen. There’s a reason Kaku is a best-selling author - people want to read what he has to say. My hard-earned cash is betting those are the same people who would’ve otherwise turned to astrology or some other new-age babble, but feel more comfortable hiding in the shadow of “real science” to quench their thirst for the supernatural.
Real popular science has been pushed aside. You know, the kind that doesn’t dumb down reality - or, should I say, dumb up. The kind that explains why ice floats, why the stars twinkle, why clouds are white, how to build your own radio, what happens inside a microchip and why the sky is blue, that encourages you to get up from your chair and try something out for yourself. One doesn’t need to talk about the big bang to feel wonderment. Seeing soap films automatically adjust their surface area for minimal energy is just as, if not more amazing. Seeing a ray of light bend so as to travel between points in the minimal amount of time is awe inspiring. And you can see those effects with your own eyes and experiment with them.
I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. In a society that believes in UFOs, wacky conspiracy theories, angels and ghosts, new age mysticism and scientology, it is no wonder that Kaku’s spiritualism is favored over good old common sense. When has this revolution taken place? Maybe it traces back to Hawking’s book. I don’t know, but people are getting an extremely warped view of how science is made, and what it is made of, the same people who will later on become decision-makers and leaders.
I’m not implying that particle physics or cosmology aren’t an important part of physics, but there are ways of presenting them that aren’t as condescending as those chosen by this new wave of pop science authors. You want to teach astrophysics? Teach your readers to look up at the sky and understand what they’re seeing first. You want to talk about elementary particles? Great. How about spending some time explaining what really goes on in a particle accelerator? Humanity DID spend over 10 billion dollars on the new one in CERN, you know; and yet, I haven’t read a single popular science book that actually bothers to dwell on that for more than a couple of lines.
Well, my rant-o-meter has peaked, I’m afraid. I’d better stop at this point, as I feel my point has been driven across, and hammering on it further would drive it out of the other end. Next post we’ll be back to physics, I promise - and it won’t have ten dimensions in it, I guarantee you! 
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Hi Asaf,
I couldn’t agree more. These self-publicists are trying to make a fast buck out of fairy stories that may appear very learned only to the uninitiated, who have little or no basic understanding of physics.
Thank you for making this statement.
Hi Anthony,
Just to reiterate: I wasn’t criticizing the content of the popular science books per se, but rather their presentation, style and lack of responsibility.
If you really want to educate someone to be a good scientist, teach them to think critically. Popper quite rightly said that a meaningful scientific theory is one which is falsifiable. Doubt is the point of origin in any scientific investigation, and it doesn’t seem those books even hint in that direction.