Brian, who was a working class observational astronomer said, "No we won't. It falls short of that goal in some other ways. (The same years I was battling, several very capable people I had known in grad school at Berkeley were also denied tenure, possibly caught in the cutbacks at the time, possibly victims of a wave . When I got to Chicago as a new faculty member, what sometimes happens is that if you're at a big name place like Chicago, people who are editors at publishing houses for trade books will literally walk down the halls and knock on doors and say, "Hey, do you want to write a book? In fact, I did have this idea that experiencing new things and getting away was important. And I do think -- it's not 100% airtight, but I do think not that science disproves God, but that thinking like a scientist and carefully evaluating the nature of reality, given what we know about science, leads you to the conclusion that God doesn't exist. I am a Research Professor of Physics at Caltech, where I have been since 2006. Usually the professor has a year to look for another job. Was that the case at Chicago, or was that not the case at Chicago? I think one thing I just didn't learn in graduate school, despite all the great advice and examples around me, was the importance of not just doing things because you can do them. And that's by choice, because you don't want to talk to them with as much eagerness as you want to talk to other kinds of scientists or scholars. I had great professors at Villanova, but most of the students weren't that into the life of the mind. So, then, you can go out and measure the mass density of the universe and compare that with what is called the critical density, what you need to make the universe flat. Chicago was great because the teaching requirements were quite low compared to other places. Carroll, as an atheist, is publicly asserting that the creation of infinite numbers of new universes every moment by every particle in our universe is more plausible than the existence of God. Were you on the job market at this point, or you knew you wanted to pursue a second postdoc? So, if, five or ten years from now, the sort of things that excite me do not include cutting edge theoretical physics, then so be it. So, it would look like I was important, but clearly, I wasn't that important compared to the real observers. So, anyway, with the Higgs, I don't think I could have done that, but he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. The much bigger thing was, Did you know quantum field theory? You can't get a non-tenured job. No, you're completely correct. They met with me, and it was a complete disaster, because they thought that what I was trying to do was to complain about not getting tenure and change their minds about it. But there definitely has been a shift. We talked about discovering the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. It's really the biggest, if not only source of money in a lot of areas I care about. But the anecdote was, because you asked about becoming a cosmologist, one of the first time I felt like I was on the inside in physics at all, was again from Bill Press, I heard the rumor that COBE had discovered the anisotropies of the microwave background, and it was a secret. The AIP's interviews have generally been transcribed from tape, edited by the interviewer for clarity, and then further edited by the interviewee. But most of us didn't think it was real. Likewise, the galaxies in the universe are expanding away from each other, but they should be, if matter is the dominant form of energy in the universe, slowing down, because they're all pulling on each other through the mutual gravitational force. And I answered it. Sean, one of the more prosaic aspects of tenure is, of course, financial stability. Were your family's sensibilities working class or more middle class, would you say? Bill Press did us a favor of nominally signing a piece of paper that said he would be the faculty member for this course. So, for you, in your career, when did cosmology become something where you can proudly say, "This is what I do. Maybe it was a UFO driven by aliens." The four of us wrote a paper. That is, the extent to which your embrace of being a public intellectual, and talking with people throughout all kinds of disciplines, and getting on the debate stage, and presenting and doing all of these things, the nature versus nurture question there is, would that have been your path no matter what academic track you took? I think, now, as wonderful as Villanova was, and I can rhapsodize about what a great experience I had there, but it's nothing like going to a major, top notch university, again, just because of the other students who are around you. I did an episode with Kip Thorne, and I would ask him questions. If I had pursued certain opportunities, I could have gotten tenured. He had to learn it. So, string theory was definitely an option, and I could easily have done it if circumstances had been different, but I never really regretted not doing it. There's a strong theory group at Los Alamos, for example. I didn't do what I wanted to do. So, they have no trouble keeping up with me, and I do feel bad about that sometimes. So, if you've given them any excuse to think that you will do things other than top-flight research by their lights, they're afraid to keep you on. [25] He also worked as a consultant in several movies[26][27] like Avengers: Endgame[28] and Thor: The Dark World. I ended up taking six semesters and getting a minor in philosophy. The discovery was announced in July. I will get water while you're doing that. I took a particle physics class from Eddie Farhi. The University of Chicago, which is right next to Fermilab, they have almost no particle physics. Part of it is what I alluded to earlier. I would certainly say that there have been people throughout the history of thought that took seriously both -- three things. So, if you can do it, it is a great thing. I don't think I'm in danger of it right now, so who knows five or ten years from now? And that gives you another handle on the total matter density. You didn't have really any other father figures in your life. Sean Carroll's Dishonesty: The Debate of 2014 I'm not making this up. No, and to be super-duper honest here, I can't possibly be objective, because I didn't get tenure at the University of Chicago. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society . Alright, Sean. The acceleration due to gravity, of the acceleration of the universe, or whatever. And it was great. This transcript may not be quoted, reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part by any means except with the written permission of the American Institute of Physics. Tenure denial, and how early-career researchers can survive it For many interviews, the AIP retains substantial files with further information about the interviewee and the interview itself. Basically Jon Rosner, who's a very senior person, was the only theorist who was a particle physicist, which is just weird. He was an editor at the Free Press, and he introduced himself, and we chatted, and he said, "Do you want to write a book?" The answers are: you can make the universe accelerate with such a theory. A nontrivial fraction of tenure-track faculty are denied tenure, well over the standard 5% threshold for Type I errors that we use in the sciences. It also revealed a lot about the character of my colleagues: some avoiding me as if I had a contagious disease, others offering warm, friendly hands. No sensible person doubted they would happen. Anyway, again, afterward, more than one person says, "Why did you write a textbook? So, for better or worse, this caused me to do a lot more conventional research than I might otherwise have done. But look, all these examples are examples where there's a theoretical explanation ready to hand. Furthermore, anyone who has really done physics with any degree of success, knows that sometimes you're just so into it that you don't want to think about anything else. Either I'm traveling and lugging around equipment, or I need to drive somewhere, or whatever. Is your sense that your academic scholarly vantage point of cosmology allows for some kind of a privileged or effective position within public debate because so much of the basis of religion is based on the assumption that there must be a God because a universe couldn't have created itself? Fred Adams, Katie Freese, Larry Widrow, Terry Walker, a bunch of people who were really very helpful to me in learning things. I'm not sure if it was a very planned benefit, but I did benefit that way. So, that was just a funny, amusing anecdote. The reason is -- I love Caltech. I do firmly believe that. In particular, the physics department at Harvard had not been converted to the idea that cosmology was interesting. You don't get that, but there's clearly way more audience in a world as large as ours for people who are willing to work a little bit. Various people on the faculty came to me after I was rejected, and tried to explain to me why, and they all gave me different stories. : Saturday 22 March 2014 2:30:00 am", "How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine", "Sean Carroll Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship", "Sean Carroll's Mindscape Podcast Sean Carroll", "Sean Carroll Bridges Spacetime between Science, Hollywood and the Public | American Association for the Advancement of Science", "Meet the professor who helped put the science into Avengers: Endgame", "Sean Carroll the physicist who taught the Avengers all about time", "Sean Carroll Talks School Science and Time Travel", "Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time", "3 Theories That Might Blow Up the Big Bang", "Science and Religion Can't Be Reconciled: Why I won't take money from the Templeton Foundation", "Science & God: Will Biology, Astronomy, Physics Rule Out Existence Of Deity? It's not just trendiness. It will never be the largest. I didn't think that it would matter whether I was an astronomy major or a physics major, to be honest. George Gamow, in theoretical physics, is a great example of someone who was very interdisciplinary and did work in biology as well as theoretical physics. You're not supposed to tell anybody, but of course, everybody was telling everybody. You're looking under the lamppost. So, Ted and I said, we will teach general relativity as a course. But it's not what I do research on. I mean, infinitely more, let's put it that way. But he didn't know me in high school. I do think my parents were smart cookies, but again, not in any sense intellectual, or anything like that. Hopefully, this person is going to be here for 30 or 40 years. That's what really makes me feel successful. You can be a physicalist and still do metaphysics for your living. I was an astronomy major, so I didn't have to take them. I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but I can tell you a story. You're being exposed to new ideas, and very often, you don't even know where those ideas come from. The tuition was right. It was clear that there was an army that was marching toward a goal, and they did it. So, I still didn't quite learn that lesson, that you should be building to some greater thing. If you spend your time as a grad student or postdoc teaching, that slows you down in doing research, which is what you get hired on, especially in the kind of theoretical physics that I do. So, I was still sort of judging where I could possibly go on the basis of what the tuition numbers were, even though, really, those are completely irrelevant. So the bad news is. Here is the promised follow-up to put my tenure denial ordeal, now more than seven years ago, in some deeper context. I'm just thrilled we were able to do this. Be proud of it, rather than be sort of slightly embarrassed by it. In 2017, Carroll took part in a discussion with B. Alan Wallace, a Buddhist scholar and monk ordained by the Dalai Lama. So, my interest in the physics of democracy is really because democracies are complex systems, and I was struck by this strange imbalance between economics and politics. Did blogging doom prof's shot at tenure? - Chicago Tribune One of the best was by Bob Wald, maybe the best, honestly, on the market, and he was my colleague. [54] In this public dialogue, they discussed the nature of reality from spiritual and scientific viewpoints. It's an honor. Let's put it that way. So, they're not very helpful hints, but they're hints about something that is wrong with our fundamental way of thinking about things. You really have to make a case. And we started talking, and it was great. I remember, even before I got there, I got to pick out my office. Really, really great guy. Abdoulaye Doucoure came close to leaving Everton under Frank Lampard Some people say that's bad, and people don't want that. A stylistic clash, I imagine. Further Reflections on the Sean Carroll Debate - Biola University So, between the five of these people, enormous brainpower. What were the faculty positions that were most compelling to you as you were considering them? So, even though the specialists should always be the majority, we non-specialists need to make an effort to push back to be included more than we are. So, literally, Brian's group named themselves the High Redshift Supernova Project: Measuring the Deceleration of the Universe. Some of them were, and I made some very good friends there, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Do you go to the economics department or the history department? Formerly a research professor in the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics in the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Department of Physics,[1] he is currently an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute,[2] and the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. People are listening with headphones for an hour at a time, right? In fact, you basically lose money, because you have to go visit Santa Fe occasionally. So, that's why it's exciting to see what happens. Why Are Professors Denied Tenure? - YouTube He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1993. I've never cared. Was that something that you or a guidance counselor or your mom thought was worth even considering at that time? That's the job. I mean, I'm glad that people want to physicists, but there's no physicist shortage out there. I want it to be proposing new ideas, not just explaining ideas out there. We hit it off immediately. So, they looked at me with new respect, then, because I had some insider knowledge because of that. I think that's a true argument, and I think I can make that argument. We've already established that. There were literally two people in my graduating class in the astronomy department. So, I thought, okay, and again, I wasn't completely devoted to this in any sense. And you mean not just in physics. But I don't remember what it was. Okay. Literally, two days before everything closed down, I went to the camera store and I bought a green screen, and some tripods, and whatever, and I went online and learned how to make YouTube videos. It was just a dump, and there was a lot of dumpiness. But you were. Don't just talk to your colleagues at the university but talk more widely. I say this as someone who has another Sean Carroll, who is a famous biologist, and I get emails for him. So, not whether atheism is true or false, but how it developed intellectually. But exactly because the Standard Model and general relativity are so successful, we have exactly the equation -- they're not just good ideas. To be perfectly honest, it's a teensy bit less prestigious than being on the teaching faculty. Sean, did you enjoy teaching undergraduates? That's almost all the people who I collaborated with when I was a postdoc at MIT. Having said that, you bring up one of my other pet crazy ideas, which is I would like there to be universities, at least some, again, maybe not the majority of them, but universities without departments. And I applied there to graduate school and to postdocs, and every single time, I got accepted. But it's worked pretty well for me. That's fine. No preparation needed from me. One is the word metaphysical in this sense is used in a different sense by the professional philosophical community. Did you understand that was something you'd be able to do, and that was one of the attractions for you? Talking about all of the things I don't understand in public intimidates me. It's said that the clock is always ticking, but there's a chance that it isn't. The theory of "presentism" states that the current moment is the only thing t. Like, several of them. The article generated significant attention when it was discussed on The Huffington Post. It literally did the least it could possibly do to technically qualify as being on the best seller list, but it did. We did not give them nearly enough time to catch their breath and synthesize things. And I do think that within the specific field of theoretical physics, the thing that I think I understand that my colleagues don't is the importance of the foundations of quantum mechanics to understanding quantum gravity. I think I would put Carl Sagan up there. Wilson denied it, calling Pete a father figure and claiming he never wanted them . "[51][52], In 2014, Carroll participated in a highly anticipated debate with philosopher and Christian apologist William Lane Craig as part of the Greer-Heard Forum in New Orleans. It's the time that I would spend, if I were a regular faculty member, on teaching, which is a huge amount of time.
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