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today Tuesday 4 January NYT
--quote--
Philip W. Anderson
Physicist and Nobel laureate, Princeton
Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has produced and will produce mathematics useful in other contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended on it.
My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do.
The sad thing is that, as several young would-be theorists have explained to me, it is so highly developed that it is a full-time job just to keep up with it. That means that other avenues are not being explored by the bright, imaginative young people, and that alternative career paths are blocked.
--end quote--
maybe the top level scientific establishment is finally wising up
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=3&oref=login
today's Science Section of the Times has selections from the responses to the Edge.org Question for 2005----brief quotes from over a dozen prominent scientists about "what do you believe but can't prove" where you get the man or woman's high priority message. Instead of being asked about a specific topic they each got to speak out with whatever message they urgently wanted to get across---usually it was something having to do with their own field (as in the case of Anderson the direction theoretical physics has been going) but it could be anything: philosophy, god, the future of the human species, morality, whatever.
the NYT informed selection from an Edge pot pourri
I think it is a good idea for an article
read it now for free----soon it goes into the NYT archives and becomes payfor
Or check out the original Edge article---with more statements from a wider variety of thinkers
http://www.edge.org/
--quote--
Philip W. Anderson
Physicist and Nobel laureate, Princeton
Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has produced and will produce mathematics useful in other contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended on it.
My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do.
The sad thing is that, as several young would-be theorists have explained to me, it is so highly developed that it is a full-time job just to keep up with it. That means that other avenues are not being explored by the bright, imaginative young people, and that alternative career paths are blocked.
--end quote--
maybe the top level scientific establishment is finally wising up
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html?pagewanted=3&oref=login
today's Science Section of the Times has selections from the responses to the Edge.org Question for 2005----brief quotes from over a dozen prominent scientists about "what do you believe but can't prove" where you get the man or woman's high priority message. Instead of being asked about a specific topic they each got to speak out with whatever message they urgently wanted to get across---usually it was something having to do with their own field (as in the case of Anderson the direction theoretical physics has been going) but it could be anything: philosophy, god, the future of the human species, morality, whatever.
the NYT informed selection from an Edge pot pourri
I think it is a good idea for an article
read it now for free----soon it goes into the NYT archives and becomes payfor
Or check out the original Edge article---with more statements from a wider variety of thinkers
http://www.edge.org/
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