I’m reading Lee Smolin The Trouble with Physics. It’s a book about the crisis of physics, which has not produced new experimentally verified theories the past 20 years. All despite more people working with physics than ever before.
To me, this sounds like something I know from the testing profession: we are more testers than ever, yet we are not generally producing new knowledge about our contribution to software development and value generation.
You disagreee? Well I hoped you would, because there are people in our business who try – but they are not generally listened to. The software industry is in trouble, but so is testing.
Smolin clearly identifies what has ruined his profession: The fact that one area, which cannot be proven by experiment, is dominating physics: string theory. We have our own ‘string theories’ – tools and techniques which don’t deliver what they promise, yet are what everybody is talking about.
Smolin has one particular worry which I’d like to quote because I think if we can fix it, we will be much better off – in physics and testing.
“So the question […] I ask myself every morning: Are we doing all we can to support and encourage young scientists – and, by virtue of this, ourselves – to transcend what we have done these last thirty years and find the true theory that solves the five grand questions of physics.”