“Are you optimistic, then, that this situation will change, and we’ll see a resurgence in big particle physics discoveries?
That’s a very good question because it looks as if there’s nothing we can do. If the situation proceeds in such a way that every new breakthrough requires a 10-fold, or even larger, increase in the machines’ size, power and costs, then clearly we won’t get much beyond where we are now. I cannot exclude such obstacles standing in the way of progress, but the history of science suggests, in such a case, progress will simply go in different directions. One may not only think of precision improvements but also [think of] totally different avenues of discovery such as cosmology and black hole physics.
I would like to advise to the new generation of scientists: don’t worry about that, because the real reason why there’s nothing new coming is that everybody’s thinking the same way!
I’m a bit puzzled and disappointed about this. Many people continue to think the same way—and the way people now try to introduce new theories doesn’t seem to work as well. We have lots of new theories about quantum gravity, about statistical physics, about the universe and cosmology, but they’re not really “new” in their basic structure. People don’t seem to want to make the daring new steps that I think are really necessary. For instance, we see everybody sending their new ideas first to the [preprint server] arXiv.org and then to the journals to have it published. And in arXiv.org, you see thousands of papers coming every year, and none of them really has this great, bright, new, fine kind of insight that changes things. There are insights, of course, but not the ones that are needed to make a basic new breakthrough in our field.
I think we have to start thinking in a different way. And I have always had the attitude that I was thinking in a different way. And particularly in the 1970s, there was a very efficient way of making further progress: think differently from what your friends are doing, and then you find something new!
I think that is still true; however, I’m getting old now and am no longer getting brilliant new ideas every week. But in principle, there are ways—one could argue about quantum mechanics, about cosmology, about biology—that are not the conventional ways of looking at things. And to my mind, people think in ways that are not novel enough.”