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The problem, as talked about in the article, is that it is NOT science. Science involves experimentation, which string theory so far has eschewed. It more resem
by kobeya 9y ago
The problem, as talked about in the article, is that it is NOT science. Science involves experimentation, which string theory so far has eschewed. It more resembles mathematics in that sense (which is ostensibly not a science either).
- coldtea 9y agoThat's just a not very well thought out definition of science, and is wrong on several counts. 1) Science does not necessarily involve experimentation. 2) String theory has attempted many times at experimental verification. 3) Math are more experimental than most people think.
- dhimes 9y agoA scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable, by definition. Some have tried unsuccessfully to argue this away, but it is still the majority opinion. And it's for this reason: once you open the "scientific" world to unfalsifiable hypotheses, you open it up to a bunch of bullshit. That is not to say, however, that all important work must be scientific. There is a certain value to exploratory work, which can guide the direction of experiments in such a way as "if we could get experiment X then we could turn hypothesis Y into a testable hypothesis." In my opinion that is important work. You can see this in fields like psychology and such where the systems are just too complex to be easily testable (even medicine to some degree). But if we don't keep pursuing we will never get there.
- yulaow 9y agoWe have this problem in general in science at this point of time, probably because of the big scope of our modern theories. EG: We already consider "Dark Energy" a sort of made-up assumption to justify a model which, after recent observations was considered falsified. So, instead of focusing on others we decided to keep using it, we created a not-falsifiable nor testable assumption (dark energy indeed) and kept going with it, even if it violates everything Popper teach us. Honestly it seems to me that, especially in physics, too many people are just too much mentally involved in their own theory that they have an hard time just dropping it when it doesn't seem to work anymore.
- dhimes 9y agoPerhaps, but science is a human endeavor like any other and thus subject to human biases. I think a great example is the discovery of the neutrino. Particle tracks showed a clear violation of energy, momentum and angular momentum, but Pauli and others believed in these fundamental properties of the universe so strongly that he (they?) proposed a particle that was virtually undetectable to keep those properties. This was a non-scientific hypothesis at the time, but it told scientists the direction they needed to pursue in order to get to the point where the hypothesis could become scientific. Most argue that the discovery of the neutrino saved the fundamental conservation laws, but we should never lose sight of the fact that we still don't detect them in a very large percentage of events we record (we say simply that they are there, but interact weakly). One important measure of whether a hypothesis is likely going to be accepted as true in the future is that as we build better and more sensitive detectors we detect more outcomes favorable to the hypothesis. This is the way smart money bets when data are still hard to come by (see 'climate change').
- posterboy 9y ago> ... believed in these fundamental properties of the universe so strongly ... > This was a non-scientific hypothesis at the time, but it told scientists the direction they needed to pursue in order to get to the point where the hypothesis could become scientific. "What is Philosophy of Physics?"
- coldtea 9y ago>A scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable, by definition Not by definition, but by one specific definition -- from the popular epistemology by Popper (who also coined the relevant term). Others (Feyerabend for one) have pointed out that actual science (in practice) doesn't work that way.
- rotorblade 9y agoIndeed. To emphasize '1)' you could mention most astro- related fields: astronomy, astrophysics, etc, which are almost purely observational.
- kobeya 9y agoObservational and experimental are not opposed attributes. For astronomers the universe is the laboratory, and that is fine. An astronomer can say "I predict binary black holes to emit gravitational waves of a certain sort" and then go and find a binary black hole system and see if it does. That is experimentation.
- rotorblade 9y agoI can possibly agree with that notion of experiment. My point, in the context of the discussion, was that just because we do not have a an idea for an experiment that would test string theory, in some definite way, does not exclude that there is some possible observation within reach.
- kobeya 9y agoSure, but it becomes troublesome when they stop bothering to look.