Michio Kaku?

Factual Questions
1

The question I have is of his veracity. I have heard some ambigious reports of him on the radio and in a magazine I read. I first heard him on Art Bell’s show (don’t ask, I used to listen to it for amusement only), so I am a bit doubtful of him.

Does anybody know anything of him? Is he a crackpot that does not follow the scientific manner and just claims to be a physicist, or is he just researching something new and therefore contraversial?

I found his (I assume) webpage, though im sure hes not going to say “hey, im a crackpot” on his own webpage. :slight_smile:

2

He is certainly not a crackpot. He’s an extremely prolific writer and has written some truly fantastic physics books. (I’ve read several.)

He does touch on a lot of “weird” stuff, though, like higher dimensions, string theory, hyperspace, and so on.

3

Oops, I forgot to include the webpage for those interested.

http://www.mkaku.org/

Oh, and while im not one to point out and call people crackpots, I was only wondering if he was in fact legit. As in do his colleges accept the main body of his work as legitimate.

4

That’s not necessarily the relevant criterion for whether a scientist is legit. It might be better to ask, “Do his colleagues consider the main body of his work to be original, plausible, and worth looking into?” Scientists as a general category tend to be too sketpical of new hypotheses to make “accept as legitimate” likely except for those areas that have been experimented to death already.

And that’s a good thing.

jayjay

5

Is this the guy who wrote Hyperspace? He’s basically speculating on matters about which we don’t know enough yet. Since we don’t know, he’s free to speculate, of course, but it doesn’t really mean much. In other words, what he’s saying doesn’t defy the laws of physics, but it isn’t really supported by them, either, to our knowledge.

Did that make any sense?

6

Yes…this is the guy who wrote Hyperspace. And yes, what you are saying makes sense (at least to me).

That said I don’t know that that is a fair take on his work (or at least that book). I read Hyperspace and while I see how much of it is speculation Dr. Kaku doesn’t seem to pretend otherwise. I see the book as more of a plug for why String theory and the like seem like such promising candidates for a TOE. In short…it reads like a sales pitch.

To me the pitch works and seems plausible but I could easily be hoodwinked in such things by a competent scientist.

Along with the OP I would also like to know how other scientists view Dr. Kaku. Is the stuff he’s championing really worth pursuing or is he working on the fringes somewhere and not taken very seriously?

7

When I used to hang out with string theorists, he was referred to as “Kookoo”. I think this was more for some of the far-out speculation in his popular books than for his professional physics work. As far as I know, he was respected for his professional work. I haven’t read any of his books (or professional papers), so I can’t give a personal opinion.

8

Not only have I read most of Kaku’s popular books (though not his academic papers), I saw him lecture and met him afterwards.

My impression of Kaku is this. He’s a really smart guy, but he’s not in the top ten percent – meaning he’s never going to make any groundshaking scientific contributions. To his great frustration, he has clearly realized this over the years. He does the academic equivalent of blue-collar work in the formal sciences, but he knows he’ll never be a top name like Hawking or Weinberg or Thorne.

Unfortunately, he likes speculating about the strange fringes of his field. He knows he isn’t “good enough” (whatever that means) to legitimately advance the field in those areas, so he confines his outré speculation to writing for the popular audience. He’s really good at it, too; his Hyperspace is concise and clear in its summaries of the more abstruse aspects of superstring theory. Coincidentally enough, I picked it up to reread it just a couple of weeks ago, and I’m greatly enjoying it again.

I suspect he has found much more fulfillment in being a successful popularizer than failing to be a groundbreaking scientist, so in addition to his books, he has, more and more, offered himself as a technical expert on documentaries and such. I saw him turn up, unexpectedly, in a TLC program about high-speed transportation; he was talking about the physics behind bullet trains and hypersonic aircraft.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a kook. For example, at the lecture I attended, I made a point of sounding him out on some of the wackier interpretations of quantum physics by asking him what he thought of Fritjof Capra. His response was telling; in general, he said, Well, it’s kind of fun to think about, but it’s not really science, you know? So in other words, the impression I get is that he enjoys sending his intellect and imagination into some pretty strange places, but he’s not so foolish as to confuse entertaining speculation with legitimate science.

Anyway, that’s just the impression I get. Take it as you will.

9

Thank you all for your responses. Like Whack a mole I felt that it would be too easy to get “hoodwinked” by the topic at hand (superstring theory) by a qualified theorist. I do not have an understanding of Physics deep enough to make my own judgement (at least an accurate one), and did not want to make great leaps in logic and confuse the issue.

And him being on Coast to Coast A.M was sort of a warning light for me. Guess they do have some legitimate people on there eh?