The Dreams of Theory EOCS - 302

Computing power and sophisticated data acquisition mask the fact that, in many sciences and engineering, the balance between theory and experiment is getting increasingly out of whack. The imbalance becomes an even greater concern in light of the increasingly complex natural systems science now confronts and the increasingly complex and interdependent socio-technical systems modern engineering allows us to construct. Given its critical role in understanding such complex systems, Big Theory deserves a place alongside Big Data and Big Iron, says Jim Crutchfield. The twenty-one year old Werner Heisenberg, already a rising star in quantum theory, was mortified when his doctoral exam committee awarded a nearly failing grade. He had passed, but excused himself early from the celebration party that evening put on by his advisor Arnold Sommerfeld. Boarding the midnight train, he abruptly left Munich to take up a previously arranged job in Göttingen, humiliated by his mediocre exam and concerned that his boss, Max Born, would no longer have him. Responding to criticism that Heisenberg’s brilliance in theory was eclipsing a well rounded appreciation of physics, Sommerfeld had required him to take Wilhelm Wien’s course in experimental physics and focus his dissertation on turbulence in fluid flows. Both Wien and Sommerfield were on his oral exam committee: Sommerfeld gave Heisenberg the highest grade, Wien failed him. In the early days of the 20th century, physics was experimental physics. Heisenberg was, plainly to Wien, no experimentalist [1]. The rest, they say, is history. Heisenberg’s towering contributions to modern physics are unassailable and, after a time, led to many key experimental discoveries. Heisenberg stands as a pre-eminent example of the card-carrying theorist—a profession new to 20th century science. Today, looking more broadly across all of science, theorists still have reason to worry. Advances in computing power combined with increasingly sophisticated data acquisition technologies have led some to claim that theory is obsolete