Dialogues

Abstract

PHIL. In recent years I have read a good deal in various popular accounts about how great changes have been occurring in physics. Several new theories have emerged, such as the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam theory of the electro-weak interaction, and the theory of strong interaction. Recently I read an article by Salam [1]; as I understand it, he reckons that physicists are now close to realising the “Einstein dream”; I refer to the unified geometric theory describing “all of nature”. (To Math) Recently I saw your copy of the Lucas Lecture by Hawking [2] in which he expresses the hope that the complete theory has already been discovered and that it merely remains to solve it; so the end is quite close. Is this the case, and what sort of a theory is it ?

PARTICIPANTS: MATH - the Mathematician, PHYS - the Theoretical Physicist, EXP - the Experimental Physicist, PHIL - the Philosopher TIME: Summer-Autumn 1982