and one more thing, john doe

[John Doe]

...and I'm glad to hear that you are now comfortable
with science using terms like "maybe" and "possibly"
regarding sexy String Theory's tenability...since they
crop up as qulaifiers everywhere in the passages
below...as in the famous "sometimes worse" predictions
of C's model vs. P's; astronomers know that, and they
know that those "sometimes" were few and irrellevant
compared to the overall correctness of his
assumption....so keep in mind Zwiebach equivocates;
Just as Weinberg justifiably waffles; " ... it has
been unusual, historically, for a mathematical model
of such power to be TOTALLY wrong...however...( did
you see the "however" there? and do you understand
that the emphasis on "totally" implies that aspects of
the model may be wrong? )...this doesn't guarrantee
String Theory's supplanting the Standard
Model...so...the point of my rant and your quote, is
that science is a competitative endeavor, with often
many possible "answers", ( all approximations
ultimately, by the way ), which are subjected to
repeatable tests to verify their descriptive
power...science is ultimately more about description
than explanation per se anyway...


--- Blake Stacey <blake.stacey at ens-lyon.fr> wrote:

> Quoting Geocoda at aol.com:
> 
> >
> > Sheldon Glashow actually said:
> >
> > But oddly there has been a new development, in
> which a new class of
> > physicists is doing physics, undeniably physics,
> but physics of a 
> > sort that does not
> > relate to anything experimental. This new class is
> interested in 
> > experiment from
> > a cultural but not a scientific point of view,
> because they have focused on
> > questions that experiment cannot address.
> >
> > So, not to nitpick and qualify, Johnny, but you've
> misunderstood a couple of
> > key points.
> >
> > 1) It's physics, for sure
> > 2) It is not temporarily, but permanently outside
> the experimental method
> >
> 
> <snip>
> 
>  From Barton Zwiebach's **A First Course in String
> Theory** (2004), p. 8:
> 
> "It should be said at the outset that, as of yet,
> there has been no 
> experimental
> verification of string theory.  In order to have
> experimental verification one
> needs a sharp prediction.  It has been difficult to
> obtain such a 
> prediction. String theory is still at an early stage
> of development, 
> and it is not so easy
> to make predictions with a theory that is not well
> understood.  Still, some
> interesting possibilities have emerged."
> 
> Two pages later:
> 
> "As a theory of quantum gravity, string theory will
> be needed to study 
> cosmology
> of the Very Early Universe.  The deepest mysteries
> of the universe seem to lie
> hidden in a regime where classical general
> relativity breaks down.  String
> theory should allow us to peer into this unknown
> realm.  Some day, we may be
> able to understand the nature of the Big Bang, and
> know whether there is a
> pre-Big Bang cosmology.
> 
> "Most likely, answering such questions will require
> a mastery of string theory
> that goes beyond our present abilities.  String
> theory is in fact an 
> unfinished
> theory.  Much has been learned about it, but in
> reality we have no complete
> formulation of the theory.  A comparison with
> Einstein's theory is
> illuminating.  Einstein's equations for general
> relativity are elegant and
> geometrical.  They embody the conceptual foundation
> of the theory and feel
> completely up to the task of describing gravitation.
>  No similar equations are
> known for string theory, and the conceptual
> foundation of the theory remains
> largely unknown.  String theory is an exciting
> research area because the
> central ideas remain to be found."
> 
> And the last paragraph of the first chapter:
> 
> "Describing nature and formulating the theory --
> those are the present-day
> challenges of string theory.  If surmounted, we will
> have a theory of all
> interactions, allowing us to understand the fate of
> spacetime and the 
> mysteries
> of a quantum mechanical universe.  With such high
> stakes, physicists 
> are likely
> to investigate string theory until definite answers
> are found."
> 
> To sum it up in one word, string theory is
> "protoscience".  **Given** future
> advances in our understanding, it **will be** within
> the realm of experimental
> verification or falsification.  At present, it might
> callously be dismissed as
> a mathematical game, but the "game" has in fact
> already had a payoff.  The
> study of Dirichlet branes, a topic which came into
> vogue in the mid-1990s, has
> led to new ways of formulating, exploring and
> teaching gauge theories, which
> were developed half a century ago and were thought
> to be a different subject
> altogether.  Yang-Mills gauge theories are useful
> tools, and we **already
> have** experimental proof that some subatomic
> particles obey them.  Therefore,
> in an indirect way, the "mathematical game" of
> string theory has already had a
> useful result, one which will remain valid whether
> or not strings themselves
> stay in favor.  Supersymmetry, another out-there
> concept from high-energy
> physics, began with people trying to explore string
> theories back in 
> the 1970s.
> It has since become a field of study on its own, and
> (thanks to Ed Witten and
> others) beginning around twenty years ago it has
> found applications in quantum
> mechanics, the study of diffusion, and other
> subjects, all of which have
> "everyday" applications.  Supersymmetry, the child
> of string theory, is all
> growed up and has children of its own:  this third
> generation is **already**
> proving useful, and will continue to do so, even if
> its "grandparent" fizzles
> into obscurity.
> 
> In the sixteenth century, one could have dismissed
> the Copernican model of the
> Solar System as a mathematical game, a technique for
> calculation that had no
> real bearing on reality.  Copernicus's editor took
> this very stance in the
> preface to Copernicus's 1543 book which laid the
> model out.  In fact, the
> predictions made of the planets' motions were
> sometimes **worse** with the
> Copernican model than with the Ptolemaic model which
> preceded it.  All the
> charges brought against string theory now could be
> brought against the
> Copernican solar system in 1600, and probably even
> more so, since until his
> work testing the model led Kepler almost up to
> inventing calculus, no new math
> came out of Copernicus.
> 
> The situation changed, of course, when Kepler showed
> that the planets moved in
> ellipses, not circles, superseding Copernicus's
> model and giving it an even
> more elegant mathematical formulation.  In string
> theory, the analagous event
> might be the Second Superstring Revolution back in
> the '90s.  Copernicus was
> vindicated and boosted out of the "protoscience"
> stage when Galileo (and the
> others who followed) made the telescopic
> observations which proved the Earth
> was not the center of the cosmos.  The analagous
> event to this 
> discovery in the
> history of string theory has not happened yet, and
> of course, it might never
> happen at all.
> 
> **All** scientific models pass through a
> protoscience stage, even if 
> this stage
> only lasts an hour.  One might be able to guess a
> new equation in the morning,
> work out its consequences by lunch, and compare them
> to experiment by 
> teatime. The new model could then be proven wrong or
> deemed 
> provisionally acceptable in
> time for dinner.  Naturally, if the math is harder
> or if the essential
> experiments have not been done, this process will
> take longer.
> 
> String theory in seven words:  "Tiny strings.  Hard
> math.  Maybe, big payoff."
> 
> I am unable to find anything in Glashow's statement
> which indicates 
> that string
> theory is "permanently outside the experimental
> method".  He uses the present
> tense, "does not relate", rather than saying "can
> never relate".  He does say
> 
=== message truncated ===



	
		
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