Before I get started, I should note that book reviews — at least when it comes to fiction — have not featured and probably will not feature prominently on this blog. However, I’ve noticed that the blog’s ‘Literature’ category (which I’ve classified as a sub-category of ‘Pleasure’) is getting a lot of hits, even though there’s hardly any content there. I thought I’d better remedy this with at least some book reviews and/or other literary content. In general, I haven’t been reading nearly as much fiction as I used to at one point, and especially when I was doing some studies in Comparative Literature at Helsinki during my M.A., but I’ve always got some book or other under way. War and Peace was under way for a long time…

It would be silly to try to write any kind of a comprehensive and informative review of War and Peace, which has been so extensively studied. That’s why I’ll opt for the same style as I have done in all aspects of this blog, i.e. I’ll just write about my personal reading experience. So, don’t expect a synopsis here; you can go read one of those on Wikipedia, among other places… I finished War and Peace towards the end of last year after working on it for about a year. That’s a long time despite the 1300 pages, and I’m not a slow reader, but what happened is that I went through stages of reading the book regularly, and then 1-2 month periods of not even touching it and reading something else. The original idea was to do a sort of a reading group with a mate of mine in the UK, but then I moved back to Finland and the initial motivation to keep reading died. I’m telling you all this because I feel that War and Peace is not an easy book to read, in fact, it’s very boring at times, and it’s very difficult to keep track of all the Russian names (notoriously, the same person may be referred to with a number of different names), especially if you’ve put the book down for a while. Anyway, let me get into some more detail about the actual book.

The Oxford World Classics edition of War and Peace

I read the Oxford World Classics version of the book, which comes with extensive notes, all of which I read. This is one reason why I said that it’s not an easy book to read, for if you want to stay on top of all the references, you really need one of these thoroughly annotated editions, and then you end up checking the notes every five minutes. That kind of ruins the pacing of an already very slow going book. Of course, the pacing of the book changes a lot from section to section, being very slow with the descriptions of the family affairs of the characters, and occasionally quite action-packed when it comes to descriptions of battles. I found the war sections more interesting, and I think they work well to give an impression of what war was like back then, despite Tolstoy’s obvious pacifist agenda.

One thing that I’ve learned to know and love in Russian literature — which I’ve read a lot — is the inner dialogue of the characters, closely associated with the psychological aspects of the great Russian novels. There’s less of this in Tolstoy than Dostoevsky for instance, but it’s certainly a visible element in Tolstoy’s work as well. There is virtually none of this well into War and Peace, which was a bit of a disappointment for me, and a major reason why I didn’t relate to any of the characters to begin with. Later on in the book there is an increase in this type of character development though, and Pierre’s inner dialogue in particular becomes a major aspect of the novel, especially in the sections where he explores Freemasonry and when he is captured by Napoleon’s forces in Moscow towards the end of the novel. I enjoyed these, although Pierre’s naivety is slightly irritating at times.

I don’t have much to say about the family relations and love affairs that take so much space in War and Peace. They are amusing at times, and give some insight — albeit surely caricatured — into the lives of the Russian nobility back in the day, but the drama with the ladies is just so much over the top that it’s a bit difficult to take it seriously.

Tolstoy’s remarks and (pseudo-)philosophical pondering about military strategy, determinism, and the interpretation of historical events increase in frequency towards the end of the book. I found them entertaining, although all of the complaints about military strategy and at least nearly all of the comments about the study of history are utterly obsolete. Over and over again we hear that military historians are under the illusion of Napoleon and his ilk being some sort of heroes who guided the events of the war with clear vision et cetera, et cetera. While this may or may not be an accurate description of the historians of Tolstoy’s day, I’m confident that contemporary historians have a rather more realistic picture about historical events. Having said that, the picture that Tolstoy paints is rather close to the one that children might get in school — it’s all very much focused on the persons.

Anyway, what I can say, with more confidence, is that Tolstoy’s conception of determinism and the power of individuals to change events is very naive, and probably inconsistent. This may be easy to say now, when we know about things like quantum indeterminacy, but regardless of all that, Tolstoy does get way too preachy about this. It’s fine if you read it as a curiosity and know a little bit about Tolstoy’s character, but I also feel that this is something that is not sufficiently clarified in the extensive notes of the Oxford World Classics edition. While this is of course a novel first and foremost, Tolstoy himself clearly intended it to be much more, and not least a philosophical essay of sorts. Hence, it would be useful if at least some of his more preposterous philosophical claims were assessed in the notes as well.

Well, I think I’ve written quite a lot already, without saying very much about the book at all. At any rate, I don’t think that this ‘review’ will make anyone want to read War and Peace. That would be unfortunate, as even though I’ve said some rather negative things about the book, I still think that it’s one of the few hundred books out there that everyone should read. Just know what you’re getting yourself into!

I’ve read (some of) the other major novels by Tolstoy, namely Anna Karenina and Resurrection, but I read both in Finnish — like I’ve read nearly all of the Russians. I do think that they translate into Finnish nicely, although this is difficult to assess without knowing Russian! I suppose that there is at least some sort of a resemblance between the Finnish and the Russian mental lives though, so I suspect that this may help. Anyway, I’m not a huge fan of Anna Karenina, but I recall that Resurrection made some sort of an impression on me. I read it many years ago though. I just wanted to mention these because I do think that Anna Karenina may be a better Tolstoy novel to start with rather than War and Peace; the former gives a good idea about Tolstoy’s idealism.

I think that’ll do, but I’ll try to add some more content to this category of the blog eventually. I’m currently reading another epic, James Joyce’s Ulysses…

Cannabis: What Were We Just Talking About?

The latest addition to the Wiley-Blackwell Philosophy for Everyone series is now out: Cannabis: What Were We Just Talking About?. I’ve got a paper in the volume as well, it’s entitled ‘Reefer Madness: Cannabis, the Individual, and Public Policy‘. You can buy the volume from Amazon (but you can download my paper from the previous link as well). The volume is edited by Dale Jaquette. I haven’t got my complimentary copy yet, so I haven’t read the other papers, but some of the titles certainly look interesting.

I’ve got the Beer & Philosophy volume from the same series and might also get the Wine & Philosophy, Whisky & Philosophy, and Running & Philosophy volumes. The idea is that these are accessible to the public, and I think that Wiley-Blackwell are hoping to sell a good few copies. My own contribution isn’t particularly ‘sexy’, it’s more of a survey article about the implications of cannabis use from the point of view of the individual on one hand and the society on the other hand. Just a bit of fun for me really, as I wrote a couple of papers about drug policy when I was still in high school and I thought it would be fun to return to the topic with a more rigorous touch.

I came across Lee Smolin’s work while researching a paper which I’ve mentioned here before, i.e., ‘In Search of a Fundamental Level’. It was Smolin’s work on Loop Quantum Gravity which interested me. The paper still needs a lot of work and I hope to test some of the ideas at the Structure and Identity conference in Bristol this weekend, where I will be presenting the paper. Anyway, this post is devoted to Lee Smolin’s 2006 book, The Trouble with Physics, which I recently read, and which I highly recommend.

The Trouble with Physics

The book is essentially a critique of string theory, although that really only provides a framework for a broader and deeper discussion of the state of physics and science, the philosophy of science and problems in the academia. Smolin’s writing is enjoyable and I kept nodding by myself enthusiastically through most of the book. However, at times it may feel that the themes of the book are not quite connected, or they are discussed only superficially. Smolin does not go into much detail about some of the relevant background in physics, such as gauge theories, so unless the reader is already familiar with much of contemporary physics it can sometimes seem that too much is assumed. Having said that, Smolin makes it incredibly easy to grasp the major problems of contemporary physics (he lists five of them: the problem of quantum gravity, the foundations of quantum mechanics, the unification of particles and forces, the fixing of the values of the free constants in the standard model, and the nature of dark matter and dark energy). All in all the only flaw in the book to my mind is that it could’ve been longer and gone into more detail on some of the issues. Smolin does have other books which do just that though, such as his 1997 book The Life of the Cosmos, which I quite fancy reading now.

Much of Smolin’s discussion of string theory focuses on a simple theme: because string theory has failed to make any empirically testable predictions and is hence not falsifiable, at least not in the usual sense, it does not deserve the dominant position that it currently has in theoretical physics. Indeed, it is not even a particularly well formulated theory. Smolin discusses the scientific, historical and sociological causes for the current state of theoretical physics in which it seems that the only viable career choice is to engage in research concerning one of the currently fashionable problems in string theory. This discussion is fascinating in that it gives an insider’s look into the everyday work of theoretical physicists — it is remarkable how many similarities one can find between Smolin’s description of the less admirable aspects of the endeavours of theoretical physicists and those of philosophers.

Philosophers may find Smolin’s discussion of the philosophy of science rather superficial, but one must keep in mind that the book is written for the layman who lacks philosophical education. Besides, it is clear that Smolin himself does have a good grasp of the relevant issues, although his discussion of the work of Popper for instance may lack the input of more recent work in the philosophy of science. Still, Smolin actually met Feyerabend several times and he has some funny anecdotes to share.

Although Smolin’s discussion of contemporary physics and string theory in particular are extremely interesting, I thought, rather surprisingly, that the best aspect of the book is the discussion concerning the sociological aspects of science. Some of this discussion, such as Smolin’s application of the so called ‘group think’ idea to the behaviour of the string theory community is perhaps a bit too simplified, but I have no doubt that there is an element of truth to it. Smolin also seems to be particularly concerned about the prospects of young researchers and about the fact that they are not being encouraged to ‘think for themselves’ and to pursue risky, original research projects. Rather, if one wishes to embark on a successful career in theoretical physics, it seems that jumping right into some fashionable aspect of the dominant field, i.e., string theory, is the only way to go. It strikes me that the situation, although certainly not as drastic as it seems to be in theoretical physics, is rather similar in philosophy: it is extremely difficult to sell a research project which deviates from accepted philosophical dogmas. I think that the Quinean conception of ontological commitment is a good example of such a dogma — which is all the more ironic given that Quine’s best known paper was entitled ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’! Let me quote a passage from Smolin concerning research ethics which I think is probably descriptive of much of academia (p. 306):

Adherence to the shared ethic is never perfect, so there is always room for improvement in the practice of science. This seems especially true today, when fashion appears to be playing too large a role, at least in physics. You know this is happening whenever there are bright young PhDs who tell you privately that they would rather be doing X but are doing Y because that is the direction or technique championed by powerful older people, and they thus feel the need to do Y to get funding or a job. Of course, in science as in other areas, there are always a few who choose to do X in spite of the clear evidence that the doers of Y are better rewarded in the short term. Among them are the people who will most likely lead the next generation. Thus the progress of science may be slowed by orthodoxy and fashion, but as long as there is room for those who do X instead of Y, it cannot be stopped completely

Smolin’s greatest concern is the relative lack of room for those who choose to do X. I share that concern, perhaps because I happen to be doing something like X myself! In any case, the real lesson of The Trouble with Physics is that we should not become bogged down with a fashionable approach to a certain problem, even if it seems to enjoy wide support. That’s not how science (or philosophy) works; we need to have several parallel lines of research while knowing full well that only one of them may be correct. The problem is that we can never be certain which one of them it is — more often than not the correct line of research has turned out not to be the most popular one.