- By Sabine Hossenfelder on
Adapted excerpt from Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, by Sabine Hossenfelder. Copyright © 2018. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, a division of PBG Publishing, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
As I write this, it’s at the Center for Mathematical Philosophy to attend a conference that promises to answer the question “Why trust a theory?” The meeting is organized by the Austrian philosopher Richard Dawid, whose recent book String Theory and the Scientific Method caused some upset among physicists.
String theory is currently the most popular idea for a unified theory of the [fundamental physics] interactions. And that explains everything: matter, space-time, and, yes, you too. At least that’s the idea. String theory has to date no experimental evidence speaking for it. Historian Helge Kragh, also at the meeting, has compared it to vortex theory.
Richard Dawid, in his book, used string theory as an example for the use of “non-empirical theory assessment.” By this he means that to select a good theory, its ability to describe observation isn’t the only criterion. He claims that certain criteria that are not based on observations are also philosophically sound, and he concludes that the scientific method must be amended so that hypotheses can be evaluated on purely theoretical grounds. Richard’s examples for this non-empirical evaluation-arguments commonly made by string theorists in favor of their theory-are (1) the absence of alternative explanations, (2) the use of mathematics that has worked before, and (3) the discovery of unexpected connections.
It posits that the universe and all its content is made of small vibrating strings that may be closed back on themselves or have loose ends, may stretch or curl up, may split or merge
Richard isn’t so much saying that these criteria should be used as simply pointing out that they are being used, and he provides a justification for them. Continue reading “A Theory with No Strings Attached: Can Beautiful Physics Be Wrong? [Excerpt]”