Ask A Genius 1251: Edward Witten, Abdus Salam, Dennis Sciama, and Paolo Budinich
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/02/02
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Changing the subject, I recently listened to a roundtable discussion on Spotify featuring Edward Witten, Abdus Salam, Dennis Sciama, and Paolo Budinich. Abdus Salam, as you may recall, was not only a Nobel laureate in Physics (1979) renowned for his work on electroweak unification but also the founder of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste.
The conversation was fascinating. They discussed topics ranging from string theory to alternative historical scenarios in physics. For instance, one panellist speculated that if Einstein had not made his groundbreaking discoveries, someone else might have done so within two or three years. However, Edward Witten argued that while those theories would have eventually emerged, it would have taken several decades to achieve what Einstein did.
Rick Rosner: I’ve even heard that Poincaré might have developed at least some of these ideas if Einstein had been struck by a trolley—possibly arriving at them within five years. Of course, that’s a completely different kind of trolley problem altogether!
They said “bus,” but a bus is anachronistic. A more interesting question is: What if Newton had been hit by a 17th‑century bus?
Jacobsen: That’s a fascinating thought.
Rosner: We know that calculus would have been developed regardless—after all, Leibniz formulated it concurrently. Likewise, if Darwin had been run over, someone with an identical theory would have had to publish to get ahead, and they likely would have ended up publishing jointly.
It might not have caught on as quickly because Darwin’s arguments were far more extensive, but it probably would have eventually. This reminds me of a sports statistics question: Which performances in sports are so exceptional that they will never be replicated? Stephen J. Gould once analyzed this and suggested that only one record truly stands out—for example, Joe DiMaggio’s legendary 56‑game hitting streak, which remains one of the most extraordinary achievements in baseball.
Speaking of baseball, this year, Shohei Ohtani approached new statistical milestones. There’s the “40‑40 club” (players with 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a season), a feat achieved by only six players in MLB history. Ohtani joined the”50‑50 club” and nearly reached the “55‑55 club,” an achievement made possible by unique circumstances. It’s a bit tedious to go into all the details, though.
But who else? Consider the discovery of the DNA structure by Crick and Watson—with significant contributions from Rosalind Franklin. Franklin’s X‑ray diffraction images led Crick and Watson, in a rather serendipitous manner, to conclude that only a double helix could produce the observed pattern. One might survey the entire history of science and ask which discovery seems almost divinely inspired by its exceptional divergence from the prevailing zeitgeist.
It’s extraordinary when compared to its time. Are any candidates standing apart? Given that over 100 million people contribute to our collective knowledge, it seems likely that almost any theoretical foundation could eventually be discovered. Yet, there’s also literature to consider.
Is Shakespeare so far beyond any other writer that no one else comes close to matching the quality of his output?
Jacobsen: Some point to Pareto distributions and similar phenomena, suggesting that exceptional achievements—whether scientific or artistic—are one-offs that mirror fundamental structural truths about the world.
That brings us to an opposite question: What discovery emerged unusually late, given the intellectual groundwork before it? Take evolution, for example. Based on his meticulous observations, Leonardo da Vinci was poised to articulate the concept of deep time some 300 to 350 years earlier. Perhaps even someone from over 2,000 years ago—maybe a priest—could have proposed a similar idea. However, these ideas remained fragmented without a cohesive presentation, as expected from Da Vinci or Darwin. Da Vinci never consolidated his work into a single treatise; much of it was lost to history. Had he succeeded, the church history timeline might have been significantly altered.
You might argue that consciousness is still not fully understood. While many people intuitively grasp what consciousness is, there remains little concerted effort to definitively solve its mysteries. Many still regard it as a nebulous problem that isn’t all that important.
Even though the Turing test is now widely regarded as an inadequate proof of consciousness, it was once considered a robust measure. Nowadays, with various other methods and tools available, the Turing test still serves as a practical gauge—even though many neuroscientists are actively researching various facets of consciousness. Yet, there isn’t a widespread push to pin it down definitively. What do you think? There’s no compelling reason to assume that our cognitive faculties are exclusively tuned to uncover alternative aspects of the universe.
Rosner: That might be a matter of perspective. There’s a famous saying attributed to Einstein: “The most surprising aspect of the universe is that it is amenable to physical and mathematical analysis.” Some invoke a benevolent god to explain this, but consider the alternative—if the universe were fundamentally incomprehensible, countless people would have perished in the futile pursuit of understanding it.
Jacobsen: Does this imply the existence of a cruel god who makes us suffer by withholding accurate information?
Rosner: Not necessarily—it may just be that reliable information is inherently hard to obtain rather than deliberately withheld.
Without a divine puppeteer, the universe can be remarkably simple when approached from the right angle. Of course, it takes time to gather the experimental data necessary to develop the correct theories. Consider Newton’s law of universal gravitation—it’s ridiculously straightforward. All inverse‑square laws in physics are almost embarrassingly obvious once you understand them.
Similarly, the fact that the intensity of light diminishes in proportion to the square of the distance from its source makes perfect sense.
Jacobsen: Do you believe, then, that the universe is wildly complicated in its underlying structure?
Rosner: That’s a relative question. Some of the brightest minds in our species have struggled for centuries to uncover aspects of universal law, which speaks to the challenge relative to our capabilities. There’s also an argument that the universe is as simple as possible. While more complicated ways to construct a universe might exist, such configurations are likely exceedingly rare—and perhaps inherently unstable.
Jacobsen: Is that enough?
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