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In Reply to: RE: Faith has much to do with it... posted by josh358 on July 15, 2012 at 12:05:08
Sylvester James Gates, Jr. is a leading proponent of String Theory and of course knows *much* more about the subject than you or I. He wants ST to become a credible theory in the worst way. You might say he has a vested interest in seeing it succeed. And yet I’m struck by the candor, honesty and modesty he brings to the debate. Would that more scientists were this comfortable and intellectually honest when discussing their pet theories.
Gates: The well-known physicist and Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow once supposedly described string theory as the theory of everything that predicts nothing. At the end of the day, if string theory does not provide us with a testable prediction—whether it be in the context of elementary particle physics or cosmology and black hole physics—then nobody should believe it.
Gates: String theory is often criticized as having had no experimental input or output, so the analogy to a religion has been noted by a number of people. In a sense that's right; it is kind of a church to which I belong. We have our own popes and House of Cardinals. But ultimately science is also an act of faith—faith that we will be capable of understanding the way the universe is put together.
NOVA: But what are the reasons for believing that string theory is correct?
Gates: The power of science is an acceptance and openness to the notion that we are fallible and must therefore be corrected by nature herself. Many other human belief systems start off with the assumption that the answer is already known. In science, it's precisely the opposite; we start out admitting to not knowing the answer. So as we struggle with our marriages of space and time, our addition of extra dimensions, our paradigm shifts from little billiard balls to little pieces of spaghetti, these exercises are all subjected to a single question: Is it there in the laboratory? Can you find its evidence? Until that happens, I am of the opinion that you should be skeptical about string theory.
Going for a walk and then dinner.
Follow Ups:
And yet, I think his frustration is quite common among physicists who are working on string theory. Physics is an empirical science, and theories rise and fall on experiment.
A theory, however elegant, must be falsifiable to be considered science. String theory is undoubtedly that, but until experiments can be proposed and conducted its position will be a tenuous one. Not, however, a completely tenuous one, since it a) is an outgrowth of current, very successful falsifiable theories and b) has been handed to us by mathematics -- a gift of God, so to speak.
I do think he's wrong about faith. IMO, the best science can do is treat its own results scientifically, that is, as provisional. So far, it has been remarkably successful. That's a matter of observation, with the utility of the scientific method itself the falsifiable hypothesis. But it could all stop working tomorrow. Boulders could float away. Water could burst into flame. Science can't say that won't happen, but, since it hasn't, the hypothesis that it will is provisionally judged a failed one.
My point here (yeah, I know, I know, I'm getting to it) is that the acceptance of fallibility extends to all scientific results, and is IMO one of the main advantages that science has over other ways of looking at phenomena, such as philosophical system building or religious belief. Both trap themselves by assuming that our knowledge is complete when it isn't.
"Water could burst into flame."
Well I read the following headline yesterday in the Register-Guard:
"Women burned after igniting oxygen".
And I didn't think that was possible either, maybe the hold of science is starting to slip...
Rick
LOL, either that, or the scientific knowledge of headline writers . . .
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