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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.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - regmac 13:14:11 07/15/12 (3)
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - josh358 14:24:05 07/15/12 (2)
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - rick_m 16:24:37 07/15/12 (1)
- RE: Faith has much to do with it... - josh358 16:27:20 07/15/12 (0)
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