Cosmologic philosophy: multiverse/string theory (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 17, 2015, 01:17 (3326 days ago) @ dhw

MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI, an atheist philosopher primarily of evolutionary science, takes on the 'physics wars' now raging over multiverse/string theory as real science or just as math constructs with no way to prove it.:-http://www.philosophersmag.com/index.php/footnotes-to-plato/77-string-theory-vs-the-popperazzi-"There is trouble within the fundamental physics community, as the title of a popular book by physicist Lee Smolin openly puts it. The trouble in question is rooted in the dominance of so-called superstring theory, despite its utter lack of empirical verifiability (as Peter Woit, another critic, put it in the title of his book, it is “not even wrong”).-"Not so, replies prominent physicist Leonard Susskind in yet another book written for the broader public, accusing colleagues like Smolin of being “Popperazzi,” i.e., rather unthinking followers of the philosopher Karl Popper and his idea that scientific theories ought to be falsifiable (i.e., capable of being shown false on empirical grounds, if they are, in fact, false).-"What's going on here? Welcome to the Physics Wars (TM). Smolin and Susskind are far from the only highly visible players in the physics community to make uncharacteristically, shall we say, bold statements about each other's credentials, intelligence, and more or less base (as seen from the other side) motives.-"When George Ellis and Joe Silk wrote an op-ed in the prestigious Nature magazine, dramatically entitled “Defend the integrity of physics,” cosmologist Sean Carroll responded via Twitter (not exactly a prestigious scientific journal, but much more effective in public discourse) with, and I quote: “My real problem with the falsifiability police is: we don't get to demand ahead of time what kind of theory correctly describes the world.” The “falsifiability police”? Wow.-***-"The focus, of course, is superstring theory and related concepts (such as that of a multiverse), which appear to be dominant in the fundamental physics and cosmology communities at the moment, and yet have gathered an increasingly vociferous number of critics who allege that these mathematical constructs are just that: math (possibly even useful math), but not science."-Comment: I have demonstrated much of the war here. Can the truth be discovered by the use of maths alone? Not likely.