Very Interesting Interview..
In the pantheon of modern physics, few figures can match the quiet authority of Gerard ’t Hooft. The Dutch theoretical physicist, now a professor emeritus at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, has spent much of the past half-century reshaping our understanding of the fundamental forces that knit together reality. But ’t Hooft’s unassuming, soft-spoken manner belies his towering scientific stature, which is better revealed by the mathematical rigor and deep physical insights that define his work—and by the prodigious numbers of prestigious prizes he has accrued, which include a Nobel Prize, a Wolf Prize, a Franklin Medal, and many more.
You know, in my talks with theoretical physicists, I’ve noticed that the greater and more accomplished the individual is, the more likely they are to say, “The real challenge is not in answering old questions but rather in finding new, better questions for whatever problem you’re addressing.” I think that’s because there’s this temptation for optimism about what can be known—this feeling that by asking the “right” questions, meaningful answers must emerge. Do you really think the problem is that we’re not asking the right questions, or is it instead that we’ve been asking the right ones, and their answers are, against our hopes, simply beyond our reach?
What you just said, that the questions are beyond our reach, is exactly what people said a decade and a century and a millennium ago. And of course, that was the wrong answer each time. We can answer these questions, but to do so requires lots and lots of science. Before Maxwell, nobody understood how exactly electric and magnetic fields hang together, and they thought, “Oh, this is impossible to find out because it’s weird!” But then Maxwell said, no, you just need this one term, and then it all straightens out! And now we understand exactly what electric and magnetic interactions do. It’s simply not correct that you cannot answer such questions. No, you can, but you have to start from the beginning, like I said about quantum mechanics.
If you believe right from the beginning that quantum mechanics is a theory that only gives you statistical answers and never anything better than that, then I think you’re on the wrong track. And people refuse to drop the idea that quantum mechanics is some strange sort of supernatural feature of the particles that we will never understand. No! We will understand, but we need to step backward first, and that’s always my message in science in general: before you understand something, just take a few steps back. Maybe you have to make a big march back, all the way back to the beginning.
Just imagine: What would your basic laws possibly be if you didn’t have quantum mechanics? Answering that, of course, requires saying what quantum mechanics is.