The Trouble With … Smolin?   A Caveat…  I should note up front
that I don’t have any `trouble with [Lee] Smolin,’ as my title
might suggest. I couldn’t resist using the above title after I
saw a Heffers book display featuring a new book, The Dawkins
Delusion; a pun on Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. I
actually found Dr. Smolin’s talk rather fun and this is not
meant to be a critique of his book or his talk. In fact, most of
this post is only loosely motivated by Smolin’s talk.  A couple
of days ago I joined a small group of Part III theoretical
physics students to attend Lee Smolin’s public talk promoting
his book, The Trouble with Physics: The rise of string theory,
the fall of a science and what comes next. The talk was held in
Cavendish (the Physics department); even though all of the
formal theorists are situated in DAMTP (Maths). This led to
half-serious speculation that a prominent DAMTP string theorist
barred Smolin from speaking at the nicer CMS facilities. Much
more likely, however, was the f