Is string theory science? Math? Religion? What is it?
There's lots of buzz about string theory recently. Two books (Not Even Wrong, by Peter Woit, and The Trouble with Physics, by Lee Smolin, an ex-string theorist), blog posts (Slashdot onceand again, Cosmic Variance, Uncertain Principles), and magazine articles (the New Yorker, Scientific American among others), and so on.
Like many, I feel capable of commenting, without the benefit of reading the books, much less understanding the basic prerequisites of QFT or the extremely hairy mathematics of string theory itself. But I do it, not to make a comment about science, but about religion.
I like Cosmic Variance's defense of string theory as an exercise. You can put the case for string theory quite simply: physics is incomplete. There are simple, physically well-posed questions that accepted theories of physics cannot answer: what is the gravitation field of an electron? What happens when you have strong gravity and high energy at the same time, as for example early in the life of the Universe? General relativity works well, the standard model of particles works well, but they are not compatible. Conventional science would do experiments, and be led by data before theory showed up to explain the data, but no data is available, or likely ever will be, for these kinds of questions. So the problem is simply to find a coherent, internally consistent point of view, which is compatible with both the standard model and general relativity. It's been The Problem in fundamental physics for nearly a hundred years now, and it has sucked up some of the best minds of several generations, without a lot to show for it. But if you care about Fundamental Physics, it's the only problem which exists. String Theory is, by collective consensus of the best minds of our age, the only likely candidate for a solution. Certainly experiment can't help, it's a completely theoretical exercise.
Sheldon Glashow's crack is that contemporary physics, in the guise of string theory, is essentially medieval theology. This is also correct: much medieval theology took, as postulates, the fundamental truth of a certain set of written documents, and then worked over the consequences of holding all those valid simultaneously. Very difficult stuff, really, especially considering the documents, and it occupied the best minds of our civilization for a thousand years. String theory is a mental exercise of precisely the same form. I guess, for me, this is a validation, not an attack. Yes, it isn't science, but it is theology, and very respectable theology too. Much better to work through GR + SM than some dusty texts selected by a fourth century committee.
Recently I watched the physics building being knocked down at the university where I work. Not a surprise, it has been outdated for decades. What seems apt, though, is that it will not be replaced. Or rather, it will not be replaced with a physics building. The physics department will be housed in some kind of interdisciplinary science center. Later, I presume, they will share offices and a secretary with the department of philosophy and philology of middle european languages. And they will find a happy home.
Like many, I feel capable of commenting, without the benefit of reading the books, much less understanding the basic prerequisites of QFT or the extremely hairy mathematics of string theory itself. But I do it, not to make a comment about science, but about religion.
I like Cosmic Variance's defense of string theory as an exercise. You can put the case for string theory quite simply: physics is incomplete. There are simple, physically well-posed questions that accepted theories of physics cannot answer: what is the gravitation field of an electron? What happens when you have strong gravity and high energy at the same time, as for example early in the life of the Universe? General relativity works well, the standard model of particles works well, but they are not compatible. Conventional science would do experiments, and be led by data before theory showed up to explain the data, but no data is available, or likely ever will be, for these kinds of questions. So the problem is simply to find a coherent, internally consistent point of view, which is compatible with both the standard model and general relativity. It's been The Problem in fundamental physics for nearly a hundred years now, and it has sucked up some of the best minds of several generations, without a lot to show for it. But if you care about Fundamental Physics, it's the only problem which exists. String Theory is, by collective consensus of the best minds of our age, the only likely candidate for a solution. Certainly experiment can't help, it's a completely theoretical exercise.
Sheldon Glashow's crack is that contemporary physics, in the guise of string theory, is essentially medieval theology. This is also correct: much medieval theology took, as postulates, the fundamental truth of a certain set of written documents, and then worked over the consequences of holding all those valid simultaneously. Very difficult stuff, really, especially considering the documents, and it occupied the best minds of our civilization for a thousand years. String theory is a mental exercise of precisely the same form. I guess, for me, this is a validation, not an attack. Yes, it isn't science, but it is theology, and very respectable theology too. Much better to work through GR + SM than some dusty texts selected by a fourth century committee.
Recently I watched the physics building being knocked down at the university where I work. Not a surprise, it has been outdated for decades. What seems apt, though, is that it will not be replaced. Or rather, it will not be replaced with a physics building. The physics department will be housed in some kind of interdisciplinary science center. Later, I presume, they will share offices and a secretary with the department of philosophy and philology of middle european languages. And they will find a happy home.
posted by TFox at
5:29 PM
