{"id":5639,"date":"2013-06-23T09:10:59","date_gmt":"2013-06-23T09:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=5639"},"modified":"2013-06-23T09:10:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T09:10:59","slug":"string-theorists-in-knots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/string-theorists-in-knots\/","title":{"rendered":"String theorists in knots"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Observer carried a debate <\/a>over the status of string theory by a theoretical physicist, Michael Duff, \u00a0and a science journalist, James Baggott.\u00a0 Mostly, they talk past each other.\u00a0\u00a0 There is much in what they say that could provoke comment, but since time is short<\/a>,\u00a0 I will only comment on one statement.
\nDuff’s final contribution includes these words:<\/p>\n

Finally, you offer no credible alternative. If you don’t like string theory the answer is simple: come up with a better one.\u00a0“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is plain wrong for several reasons.\u00a0 First, we would have no scientific progress at all if critics of scientific theories first had to develop an alternative theory before they could advance their criticisms.\u00a0\u00a0 Indeed, public voicing of criticisms of a theory is one of the key motivations for\u00a0other\u00a0scientists to look for alternatives in the first place.\u00a0 So Duff\u00a0has the horse and the cart backwards here.\u00a0\u00a0
\nSecondly, “come up with a better one<\/em>“?\u00a0\u00a0 “better<\/em>“?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What means “better<\/em>“?\u00a0 Duff has missed precisely the main point of the critics of string theory!\u00a0 We have no way of knowing – not even in principle, let alone in practice – whether string theory is any good or not, nor whether it accurately describes reality.\u00a0 We have no experimental evidence by which to assess it, and most likely (since it posits and models alleged additional dimensions of spacetime that are inaccessible to us) not ever any way to obtain such empirical evidence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I have argued before<\/a>, theology\u00a0has more empirical support – the personal spiritual experiences of religious believers and practitioners – than does string theory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So,\u00a0suppose we did come up with an alternative theory to string theory:\u00a0 how\u00a0then could we tell which theory was the better of the two?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\nPure mathematicians, like theologians, don’t use empirical evidence as a criterion for evaluating theories.\u00a0 Instead, they use subjective criteria such as beauty, elegance, and self-coherence.\u00a0\u00a0 There is nothing at all wrong with this.\u00a0 But such criteria ain’t science, which by its nature is a social activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s Observer carried a debate over the status of string theory by a theoretical physicist, Michael Duff, \u00a0and a science journalist, James Baggott.\u00a0 Mostly, they talk past each other.\u00a0\u00a0 There is much in what they say that could provoke comment, but since time is short,\u00a0 I will only comment on one statement. Duff’s final […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,71,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-religion","category-science","p1","y2013","m06","d23","h09"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}