NOT EVEN FOOLING THEMSELVES ANYMORE:

Einstein's Legacy -- Where are the "Einsteinians?" (Lee Smolin, Logos)

Einstein’s single goal in science was to discover what he called theories of principle. These are theories that postulate general rules that all phenomena must satisfy. If such a theory is true, it must apply universally. In his study of physics he identified two existing theories of principle: the laws of motion set out by Galileo and Newton, and thermodynamics. [...]

So what is Einstein’s real legacy? Are any of us his followers? In this centennial year, there will be many who claim the mantle. That includes the community of relativists, but many of them rarely look beyond the theory. Instead they study it by finding solutions on computers or by looking for gravity waves. There are also a few physicists who follow Einstein in rejecting quantum theory and in searching for an alternative. Einstein would have been happy that some scientists agree with him, but he likely would have been critical that most work in that area ignores the problem of unification.

Some string theorists will claim to be Einsteinians, and certainly Einstein would have approved of their search for a unification of physics. But here is how Brian Greene, in his last book, describes the state of the field: “Even today, more than three decades after its initial articulation, most string practitioners believe we still don’t have a comprehensive answer to the rudimentary question, What is string theory? . . . Most researchers feel that our current formulation of string theory still lacks the kind of core principle we find at the heart of other major advances.”

Einstein’s whole life was a search for a theory of principles. It is hard to imagine he would have sustained interest in a theory for which, after more than 30 years of intensive investigation, no one is able to put forward any core principles.

He may in this regard have been happier with approaches to quantum gravity that stay closer to the core principles of relativity. For example, loop quantum gravity preserves his discovery that space and time have no fixed background, and it also provides an answer to Einstein’s questions of how to go beyond the continuum. But Einstein would have found unacceptable all approaches to quantum gravity that take quantum mechanics as fundamental, including string theory and loop quantum gravity. Einstein never wavered from his rejection of quantum mechanics. His motive for making a unified field theory was not to extend the domain of quantum mechanics; it was rather to find an alternative to quantum mechanics. No research program that accepts quantum mechanics as a given can count itself to be within Einstein’s legacy.

I think a sober assessment is that up until now, almost all of us who work in theoretical physics have failed to live up to Einstein’s legacy. His demand for a coherent theory of principle was uncompromising. It has not been reached—not by quantum theory, not by special or general relativity, not by anything invented since. Einstein’s moral clarity, his insistence that we should accept nothing less than a theory that gives a completely coherent account of individual phenomena, cannot be followed unless we reject almost all contemporary theoretical physics as insufficient.