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Alan Guth the atheist?

This appeared on my talk page, in defence of the claim that Guth is an atheist. It seems more appropriate here:

Here is a site map of the website; http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/index.htm .

It is even critical of Christianity.

Okay, it seems non-creationist.  :-) But the claim still seems ill-sourced, apparently being based on Guth's biography "The Inflationary Universe". I don't recall any atheist affirmation in it, although he does say something, somewhere (where?, I can't remember) about preferring beliefs to be empirically based. Guth sounds like an atheist to me, but I'm sure many religious people would disagree -- miracles are meant to be empirical, aren't they?

Just give us the page number from his bio. --Michael C. Price 01:29, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Whether or not he's an atheist, can we get some citation from a WP:RS that documents it? I'm going to go ahead and tag the whole article as needing to cite its sources. Wellspring (talk) 12:58, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

All I know is that he certainly is a practicing Jew. He is taking off this Thursday from MIT to celebrate Yon Kippur. Clark3934 (talk) 23:36, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

:-) --Michael C. Price 06:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I had heard he was a non-practicing Jew. But that's what I've heard, so it's not realiable. He is critical of creationism and intelligent design, as are most scientists (hell, even most religious philosophers), regardless of thier views on religion. You have to remember he's a String Theory proponent, though, they have no view on God as they see it sould be entirely possible he (or it) exists, and it could be possible that he does not. It is not a question they generally like to concern themselves with. I guess that's Apatheism. 98.198.83.12 (talk) 08:45, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Entry needs editing

Hello. My first Misplaced Pages comment. I enjoyed reading this entry on Alan Guth, but feel I should point out that there are quite a few grammatical errors, missing words, and questionable word choices which a careful reading will reveal. I won't wield the hammer and nails myself because it's past my bedtime, and I'm not sure I know how to go about it anyway. I leave it in your capable hands. All the best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.116.131.81 (talk) 07:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

NPOV

Seems to me like the article is written very colloquially and is far from satisfying the NPOV guidelines. Throughout, there is pretty much a judgement and/or and opinion interjected with every fact.

Example 1: "MIT was easier for him than high school because all his courses were science and math. One reason he did this was because he was worried about the draft. He certainly was not a big fan of the Vietnam War, because in 1970 he participated in some speeches at political activities"

--> What does this undocumented speculation have anything to do with anything?

Example 2: "Ironically, much of that theory had been developed by graduate students at Princeton, but Guth had been too wrapped up in his own ideas to notice what was going on around him. When Guth discovered this he felt embarrassed that he was paying no attention to what his colleagues were doing. Since his time at Princeton had been wasted, he had to find another postdoc job in any way that was available to him, such as reading notices on bulletin boards and called acquaintances who worked in physics departments."

--> This is downright meant to degrade Alan Guth. What is its relevance and significance in this article?

In agreement with the comment above, it is in need of serious work. Evilmathninja (talk) 18:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree the whole tone and style of the article is awful (the result of one editor's rewrite). The best thing would be to revert back. --Michael C. Price 21:39, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

not encyclopedic

As others have noted, this article needs serious work. One thing that really stuck out to me was all the phrases like "Alan Guth believes..." and "Alan Guth's main beliefs about the universe are..." This makes him sound like a guru rather than a scientist. The whole thing is written like some kind of junior high school fanboy paper.75.83.69.196 (talk) 14:36, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I have tried to make the article sound more encyclopedic, removing much uncited material, which was probably based by somebody on interview(s) with the subject. Interviewers typically lard up their articles with attempts to make the subject sound like a guru; this is NOT the fault of the person being interviewed. If there are good reliable published sources out there, I hope somebody will use them to make the article even better. betsythedevine (talk) 01:33, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I have made a start - for instance by removing all the material about confirming inflation, which was/is/will be the work of a much wide community.

Further work is still required. -- cheers, Michael C. Price 13:51, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Missing the context of the 70's Ph.d. Glut and the inability of Universities to recognize talent

The discussion of his early career fails to mention that when he graduated in 1971 it was during the Ph.d. Glut that hit in 1970 in Physics and other sciences. So the inability to get a tenure track job and the repeated postdoc positions was the most likely fate of the Physics graduate in that era. The key thing is that things switched from boom to bust very quickly, whereas today things have been pretty tough for Physics grads for 40 years (with some interludes of improvement). It also would help to contrast Guth's achievements as a postdoc with all those who got tenure track jobs before him, because it would illustrate the repeated pattern the failure to recognize scientific talent. Einstein being the most know example given that he could only get a job as a Swiss patent clerk, a job he continued to be employeed at even after the publication of his famous 1905 papers. 205.189.194.208 (talk) 17:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's that relevant - after all everybody was in the same boat. -- cheers, Michael C. Price 13:49, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Publications

My first kick didn't yield any sufficient list.
Any suggestions? (The current "one item" list is way incomplete.) Josh, linguist (talk) 07:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Guth's recanting of inflation theory

Hi all. I added a subsection on the latest interview by Linde to FT, where Linde is cited as saying Guth has recanted inflation. This is newsworthy as it indicates a dispute over the Nobel prize.

"According to Linde in his interview to the Financial Times, Guth has recanted inflation theory altogether, in a paper "more than 100 pages long"." Holybeef (talk) 16:45, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

FWIW - rv edit - there doesn't seem to be a recanting by Guth (or any one else?) - nor any mention of "100 pages" - in the reference cited => < ref>Andrei Linde on the Big Bang and the biggest discovery of all time, interview with Clive Cookson. The Financial Times, 11 April 2014.</ref> - *entirely* ok w/ me to rv/mv/ce if otherwise of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 17:09, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry my bad, the entire interview is in audio format and the text is just an excerpt. You have to click on the mini player. Reverted. Thanks. Holybeef (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Brief Followup - Updated edit to following =>

Guth's recanting of "old inflation" theory

According to Linde in his audio interview (04/11/2014) (about 14-16/43:06 minute total), Guth has recanted his "old inflation" theory, in a paper "more than 100 pages long".< ref>Andrei Linde on the Big Bang and the biggest discovery of all time, interview with Clive Cookson. The Financial Times, 11 April 2014.</ref>

Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 18:41, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but why "old inflation" and why the quotation marks? I didn't get an impression from listening to the audio that there was Guth's old v. Gut's new inflation. (In case you somehow missed it, my subsection is inside the Guth's inflation section only). Besides, see the section's end where it says Linde and Guth merely exchanged papers afterwords, and that's it. So I've just changed "old inflation" back to inflation. Holybeef (talk) 23:28, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you *very much* for your comments - no problem whatsoever re your recent edits - seems I heard Linde say that Guth referred to his 1980 "inflation scenario" thinking as "old inflation" (about 15:10 into the audio interview?) - hence, the quotation marks - for me, a transcript of the interview may help I would think - in any regards - thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 00:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Not a problem, you're "very welcome." With or without transcript, "inflation scenario" sounds more like colloquialism than referring to a notable (original or later) theory of Guth's. If such a later theory exists, I think the article would have discussed it by now. The way things seem to be at the moment, Linde has proposed his own "very simple idea" only after Guth had already recanted inflation as impossible -- a conclusion Guth felt so strongly about that it took him "over 100 pages" to write the recanting paper. Holybeef (talk) 06:08, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Just wondering - what exactly are the "100 pages"? - a publication somewhere? - a draft? - maybe find out from Linde himself (or even Guth himself) if possible? - seems there may be more to the story than what we may know (or think we know) at the moment - including perhaps what Guth really meant by his "inflation scenario" wording of course - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 13:18, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Linde speaks of "a paper" so I'm assuming it was a scientific paper or report. Not a newspaper mind you, as the sheer volume seems forbidding for that type of scenario ;) Holybeef (talk) 14:01, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, might be interesting to know more about the paper(s) of course - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 15:45, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Having read this article for the first time today, it seems to me that the Andrei Linde interview provides an intriguing link, but I feel strongly opposed to creating a whole section titled “Guth’s recanting of inflation theory." As I understand it, almost nobody--including Guth--subscribes to the original “false vacuum” theory of inflation, but “slow roll inflation” is alive and well, and the deeper intuition behind both inflation theories remains intact in Guth’s original ideas. Indeed, it was Guth who originally coined the term. Thus, the statement “Guth has recanted his inflation theory," while perhaps technically correct, is misleading. Also, Guth hasn’t by any stretch of the imagination recanted all theories of inflation. See, for example, his most recent paper on the ArXiv (http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.7619) where he writes: "We conclude that cosmic inflation is on a stronger footing than ever before." I’m going to take a stab at rewriting the article to keep these views in perspective. A practicing cosmologist ought to take a look, though. My expertise is in condensed matter.

For general reference, here is my transcription of the section of the Andrei Linde interview in question:

“But then he found—and this was in 1980—but then he found that it does not quite work. Because later you need to get rid of this false vacuum, you need to get normal matter. And this false vacuum, when it starts decaying, it becomes nonuniform, ugly, and as a result we do not get the universe the way we see it. So this was a scenario which no is called ‘old inflation.’ And he had written in his paper that ‘sorry, it does not quite work. We should all try, maybe we will make it work.’ And then, he had written a long, long paper—100 pages—proving it was impossible to improve this scenario. But there was little communication between Russia and the U.S., so all communications from the U.S. were coming to Russia during several months. So I received this preprint after … already improved his scenario. And that is something which I called ’new inflationary scenario.’ This version of this theory did not quite work either, and a year later it was discarded. And then in '83 I proposed something which is called chaotic inflation, and it was very very simple. It was really simple. There was no vacuum-like space … you need some special kind of field of the type Higgs field, which was already discovered at LHC, and under certain conditions, even in very simple theories of that kind, you will have exponentially fast expansion of the universe, and then you solve all problems which you would not solve otherwise, and this is exactly the version of the theory which predicted gravitational waves with an amplitude which was discovered by Bicep2. That’s why for me personally, this was a day of celebration. That is assuming that the interpretation of the experimental data is right.

...and here is a link to what I think is likely to be the "100-page" paper Guth wrote in 1980 discarding the false-vacuum theory of inflation: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0550321383903073# The title is: Could the universe have recovered from a slow first-order phase transition? Csmallw (talk) 00:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

@Csmallw - Thank you for your comments - and transcription - they're *very much* appreciated - I agree - an opinion from a cosmologist about all this might be worthy of course - in any regards - Thanks again for your comments - and - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 00:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Glad I could be helpful :) Csmallw (talk) 01:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

• strongly opposed. Reverted your change(s). The "first incarnation" is your POV. Point #2: sorry but what's "although he technically did recant"? You can't be "half pregnant", can you? Your explanation is sheer nonsense. Please don't make up stuff and don't provide your own thoughts about "what Guth might have meant." Besides it was not a new section (as you tried to imply) but simply a properly referenced subsection on a newsworthy statement by a cosmologist Linde who couldn't be more precise: Guth has recanted his inflation. What's to discuss? What's all the fuss about, it's just stating the facts that counts, this is Misplaced Pages. Holybeef (talk) 13:06, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

As a reminder: Misplaced Pages includes newsworthy information from reputable sources and you can't imagine a more reputable source than the Financial Times and Andrei Linde as a world leading cosmologist, correct? So burden of proof in this case is on those who want to dispute Linde but that's going to be virtually impossible as he gave audio interview. But feel free to provide for example another reputable source that counters what he said. His interview is valid, so it stays in either case as newsworthy info. Besides, I see no point in soliciting opinion of "another cosmologist". Not only that Linde is a cosmologist but that's also not what Misplaced Pages does. It only reports from third-party reliable sources. Don't forget also: no POV please. Holybeef (talk) 15:17, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

1. Andrei Linde on the Big Bang and the biggest discovery of all time, interview with Clive Cookson. The Financial Times, 11 April 2014.

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