*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
Ideas, persons, and reality
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
Up to now an utterly convincing proof of the validity of string theory is still missing. What is more, even rigorous proofs of the subsidiary hypotheses are scarce. As we have seen in the previous sections, a fact in string theory is based on a large number of elements supporting it. Concerning the elusive M-theory, that construct which by the turn of the century was thought to be the final theory of physics, Michael Duff wrote in Scientific American: ‘‘New evidence in favor of this theory is appearing daily, representing the most exciting development since strings first swept onto the scene.’’[source] In Zwiebach’s undergraduate textbook which we have already quoted, it is asked: ‘‘Are we sure string theory is a good quantum theory of gravity? There is no complete certainty yet, but the evidence is very good.’’ And in an introductory review article on Maldacena’s conjecture it is stated: ‘‘We describe the initial conjecture, the development of evidence that it is correct, and some further applications.’’[source] For a mathematical model such as string theory, the word “evidence” in these statements seems to have an unusual and peculiar meaning.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
It is a common trait among all theories within the natural sciences not to be fully verifiable; only partial results can be invoked. However, the problem with superstring theory is that it is not an empirically testable model; thus, mathematical demonstrations ought to be extremely scrupulous. Due to these limitations, many members of the physics community offer strong resistance to string theorists’ claims. From both fronts, experimental and theoretical, detractors consider that string theory procedures do not follow standard scientific requirements. Nonetheless, string theorists have succeeded in building a representation of the physical world that can be easily distinguished by everyone: a universe full of vibrating tiny superstrings and unseen extra dimensions. Their world is omnipresent in modern discourses of science, from professional conferences dedicated to the future of experimental high energy physics to its mass media coverage. In a sense, they have convinced us of the scientific nature of their reality. But, how did they construct it? Is there enough “evidence” to support their visions? Where does this evidence come from? The AdS/CFT evolution, from a conjecture to a scientific fact, will provide us with some clues.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
The question we must pose is the following: if nobody has been able to show the full quantum regime of the correspondence (at this level even the most elementary evidence is missing) and only classical supergravity results have been presented, why do then string theorists think it is valid? I think the answer to this question is more sociological than technical. And I am not the only one to think so; others have arrived at similar conclusions. However, our approaches are different. One explanation goes like this: since string theorists form a social group with strict modes of being and behaving, members are simply compelled to accept it. In other words, the AdS/CFT relationship is a matter of fact and that’s all; if you do not accept it then you are out! In contrast to this simplistic point of view, others have elaborated more on their thoughts. Lee Smolin, a vehement anti-string theorist, writes in one of his books: ‘‘I will speak of conjectures that were widely believed to be true, in spite of never having been proved. … I will speak of the pressures that young scientists feel to pursue topics sanctioned by the mainstream in order to have a decent career.’’[source] Further in the book he continues: ‘‘String theory now has such a dominant position in the academy that it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field.’’ The mathematician Peter Woit, one of the most resolute anti-string theorists in the public arena, declares that ‘‘as long as the leadership of the particle theory community refuses to face up to what has happened and continues to train young theorists to work on a failed project, there is little likelihood of new ideas finding fertile ground in which to grow.’’[source] These considerations are in a sense correct. Unfortunately, in my opinion the whole argument is defective. Smolin and Woit, in different ways, try to explain why younger string theorists presume the correctness of the theory: they simply trust senior experts “in order to have a decent career.” However, they do not say why elder members also believe in the validity of the theory. Our initial question about the AdS/CFT correspondence would then be better posed if formulated as follows: why do string theorists, old and young, think the theory is valid? This reformulation of the question incorporates a temporal dimension that will prove essential to understanding the construction of facts in superstring theory. In effect, if Smolin’s description is incomplete it is because it is based on a static view of the string theory community. The idea is to determine how this “mainstream” was created, or, in other words, how the AdS/CFT became a physical fact. At the root of my discussion is the assumption that the real community of string theorists is very dynamic, with a longstanding flow of ideas and people moving constantly across the ‘‘border’’ between the ‘‘inside’’ and the ‘‘outside.’’ This has ultimately created string theory reality. A glimpse into my general approach will help the reader to follow the argument.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
Everybody is aware that theoretical physics is very difficult, and superstring theory is one of the toughest areas. In fact, string theory is so complex that experts are neither able to understand entirely the main developments nor to follow its rapid growth. In general, practitioners feel confident only in a specific subfield. People working on the AdS/CFT correspondence or twistor theory, for example, do not comprehend the whole area, even though they can be extremely competent when tackling the particular problems of the subfield. Because of this, paradoxically, those that have provided the evidence in support of superstrings do not fully grasp it. Many do not understand the AdS/CFT correspondence completely but they believe in it; it is a matter of fact. A fact in string theory is a shared belief that something is unquestionably true. What I will try to show here is that string theorists often base their beliefs on what they have seen proclaimed everywhere. This ubiquitous discourse includes technical seminars and articles, which I will call the in-in discourse, as well as popular speeches and books, the out-in discourse. Furthermore, I will try to convince the reader that string theorists start to internalize the rules of the game long before they become experts; by means of a discourse that embraces the whole society. I will dub this the out-out discourse when the information comes from non-experts, and the in-out discourse when it comes from professional physicists. Let us begin with this in-out discourse.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
The first contact a teenager has, maybe while studying in high school or even much earlier, with superstrings is crucial. The picture they build in their minds derives from their daily experiences, experiences transmitted mainly by mass media (television, magazines, internet, and newspapers) and taught in institutions (school and museums). Brian Greene’s book provides an illustration of the content of such discourse:
In this best-selling book, Greene affirms that string theory has been able to count the internal degrees of freedom of black holes. This comment is not isolated. Many other authors back up and complement this opinion. Stephen Hawking also talks about the connection between the physics of black holes and superstrings. In The Universe in a Nutshell he included a chapter with a suggestive title: ‘‘Brane New Worlds, Do we live on a brane or are we just holograms?’’ As is usual in most popular books on contemporary theoretical physics, this is simply an eccentric way to talk about the AdS/CFT correspondence. And, eight years after Maldacena first proposed the holographic correspondence, he writes confidently:
Considering the host of materials devoted to the topic, and not only written but also visual, we realize immediately that the holographic correspondence is presented as ‘‘scientific truth.’’ The future theoretician builds up their representation of the theory, and its achievements and limitations, from these first accounts. Though we must admit that the idea of superstrings as shown on TV programmes and best-selling books is not the same as the theory later taught in universities and research institutes (extra dimensions are there just to cancel the quantum anomaly of the Virasoro algebra; the graviton is the action of ladder operators on the vacuum of the theory; and supersymmetry on the worldsheet is projected in the spacetime by the Gliozzi-Scherk-Olive artifice), there is a common objective in both discourses: to put forward the exactitude of superstrings. Every single partial result is part of the evidence sustaining the ultimate validity of the theory (here it is important not to forget that, as we saw, the most fundamental claims are constantly displaced by new “non-essential” challenges). In this sense, avowals about the accomplishments of the correspondence, whether in the in-out or the in-in discourses, must be understood as implicit declarations of the success of superstring theory: quantization of gravity and unification of all the forces.
Joseph Polchinski’s classic textbook, the first edition of which came out only a few months after Maldacena’s 1997 paper, briefly introduces the correspondence in a section on ‘‘Black hole quantum mechanics’’:
His cautious optimism reflected the general mood of the community of experts at that time. Two years after Polchinski’s book, a new edition of Michio Kaku’s introduction to superstrings was published. For this revised edition he wrote a new chapter on black holes and the ‘‘CFT/AdS correspondence.’’[source] Maldacena’s conjecture was elbowing its way towards the highest degree of factuality, and acceptance. Nowadays the correspondence is an essential topic in any course on string theory. Let us illustrate this with some examples. On the back cover of the recent book written by John Schwarz and collaborators, Nima Arkani-Hamed, a leading string phenomenologist, comments: ‘‘This is the first comprehensive textbook on string theory to also offer an up-to-date picture of the most important theoretical developments of the last decade, including the AdS/CFT correspondence and flux compactifications, which have played a crucial role in modern efforts to made contact with experiment.’’[source] The editors of Clifford Johnson’s textbook on D-branes are of the opinion that “they have lead to many striking discoveries, including the precise microphysics underlying the thermodynamics behaviour of certain black holes, and remarkable holographic dualities between large N-gauge theories and gravity.’’[source] In the chapter ‘‘String thermodynamics and black holes,’’ Zwiebach declares:
… “there are no grounds to suspect that it fails to hold.”
The discussion above suggests that many string theorists have begun their careers with a biased view of the subject. How they conceive the theory during their formative years depends crucially on previous contact with materials intended for the general public and, later on, on the systematic training given by senior members of the community. We have seen how these two stages in the education of future string theorists coincide at one point: they present new subjects as confirmations of the most fundamental claims of the theory. The theory has succeeded in: quantizing gravity and unifying all the fundamental forces of nature. In addition, it explains the thermodynamics of black holes and has also demonstrated a precise gravity/particle physics correspondence. This is what is taught. Even though young string theorists can feel sometimes uncomfortable with the weakness of some arguments, the challenge usually exceeds their skills. Moreover, in such a competitive field there is no time to digress by asking fundamental questions. When finally the young researcher becomes a full member, with many more resources at hand to tackle fundamental issues, it turns out that they are probably working on a specific topic with its own problems. And, not surprisingly, all these investigations assume the validity of the basic claims of the theory. The once controversial claims are no more questioned; they have been internalized as matters of fact. Eventually, the young researcher becomes an accomplished theoretician; it is now their turn to protect the theory and contribute fervently to the in-out discourse. This final step consolidates further the scientific fact and, very importantly, guarantees the reproduction of well-trained newcomers. This long and tortuous process of internalizing the rules of the game is sociological, but unavoidably also psychological. As I said above, a fact in string theory is a deep and sincere belief, and nobody can dispute certain issues without at the same time denying their own self.
So far I have illustrated two discourses that have fostered the confirmation of string theory. The first resides largely within the physics community; what I have called the in-in discourse. The second embraces the public at large. I dubbed this the in-out discourse. And, by definition, both of them involve the communication of ideas; ideas that define what string theory is and what it means to be a string theorist. We have also seen that when the ideas are broadly diffused, as in the in-out discourse, they can re-enter as matters of fact. Newcomers embody them. This process then accelerates the stabilization of the scientific fact. I will name the combination of these two processes the in-out-•••-in process. The three points are included to signify the embodiment of the discourse. This intermediate step is a mixture of discourse and person, namely, it represents the potentiality that persons from the ‘‘outside’’ who have embodied the ‘‘internal’’ discourse have to modify the scientific explanation. Due to its significance, the in-out-•••-in process is at the heart of my history of superstring theory.
Many years ago the sociologist of science Bruno Latour used a similar construct to understand Pasteur’s studies of anthrax.[source] Both approaches blur the boundary between the inside and the outside. Nevertheless, there are crucial differences between the two. Mainly, the displacements from the inside to the outside and back to the inside as I see them in string theory are continuous and not discrete. String theorists do not go like Pasteur, in Latour’s explanation, to a kind of farm to test the theory and then go back to their laboratories to improve the model for future applications. Latour says that Pasteur brings the laboratory with him to the farm and then in turn, the farm to the laboratory. In string theory we observe a more complicated phenomenon. Firstly, rather than going to a farm, string theorists propagate ideas. Secondly, we do not deal with a single person but with a large community, instead. From the most influential researcher to the most humble undergraduate student, all of them contribute to the in-out discourse. Thirdly, the ideas re-enter the field thanks to a continuous flow of newcomers (in-out-•••-in process). As we will see in the next section, this last point is even more convoluted. The ideas oriented towards public audiences not only re-enter the field thanks to the arrival of new students but by means of immaterial actors such as TV programmes, popular press, and institutional campaigns. To be clear, I am talking about the role of popular science in the constitution and consolidation of scientific explanations. As a consequence of these displacements the boundary between the inside and the outside is not just blurred after a set of discrete steps but at every moment; and not only by a person but by many people and countless ideas.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
What I’ve described in this section is an alternative strategy of validation that string theorists have persistently employed in order to preserve what they consider a worthwhile field of research. The purpose of this is to protect the theory from attacks from defenders of contending models; attacks due in part to theoretical and experimental shortcomings. It is not an exaggeration to say that string theory uses propaganda, more or less as Galileo did in his times: ‘‘He uses psychological tricks in addition to whatever intellectual reasons he has to offer. These tricks are very successful: they lead him to victory.’’[source] String theorists too have expanded the circle of believers to include the lay public. As would have been expected, string theorists have been bitterly criticized for using this stratagem: ‘‘The theory has been spectacularly successful on one front, that of public relations.’’[source] But the same could be said, in different degrees, about any other scientific theory; including Galileo’s physics as well as the theories proposed by anti-string theorists. Finally, it should be said that other proposals advanced thus far to quantize gravity and to unify the fundamental forces are not as developed as superstrings. Indeed, these results are less promising than those obtained by string methods. The reason for the disagreement between the two groups is not only about concrete results, but, at least as they see it, about broader conceptions of science. This explains why the “outside” has been the arena for struggles between string and anti-string theorists.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
________________________________________________________________________
SELECTED READINGS FOR ESSAY 1 (III)
SELECTED READINGS FOR ESSAY 1 (III)
________________________________________________________________________
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.**************You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
Ideas, persons, and reality
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
Up to now an utterly convincing proof of the validity of string theory is still missing. What is more, even rigorous proofs of the subsidiary hypotheses are scarce. As we have seen in the previous sections, a fact in string theory is based on a large number of elements supporting it. Concerning the elusive M-theory, that construct which by the turn of the century was thought to be the final theory of physics, Michael Duff wrote in Scientific American: ‘‘New evidence in favor of this theory is appearing daily, representing the most exciting development since strings first swept onto the scene.’’[source] In Zwiebach’s undergraduate textbook which we have already quoted, it is asked: ‘‘Are we sure string theory is a good quantum theory of gravity? There is no complete certainty yet, but the evidence is very good.’’ And in an introductory review article on Maldacena’s conjecture it is stated: ‘‘We describe the initial conjecture, the development of evidence that it is correct, and some further applications.’’[source] For a mathematical model such as string theory, the word “evidence” in these statements seems to have an unusual and peculiar meaning.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
It is a common trait among all theories within the natural sciences not to be fully verifiable; only partial results can be invoked. However, the problem with superstring theory is that it is not an empirically testable model; thus, mathematical demonstrations ought to be extremely scrupulous. Due to these limitations, many members of the physics community offer strong resistance to string theorists’ claims. From both fronts, experimental and theoretical, detractors consider that string theory procedures do not follow standard scientific requirements. Nonetheless, string theorists have succeeded in building a representation of the physical world that can be easily distinguished by everyone: a universe full of vibrating tiny superstrings and unseen extra dimensions. Their world is omnipresent in modern discourses of science, from professional conferences dedicated to the future of experimental high energy physics to its mass media coverage. In a sense, they have convinced us of the scientific nature of their reality. But, how did they construct it? Is there enough “evidence” to support their visions? Where does this evidence come from? The AdS/CFT evolution, from a conjecture to a scientific fact, will provide us with some clues.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
The question we must pose is the following: if nobody has been able to show the full quantum regime of the correspondence (at this level even the most elementary evidence is missing) and only classical supergravity results have been presented, why do then string theorists think it is valid? I think the answer to this question is more sociological than technical. And I am not the only one to think so; others have arrived at similar conclusions. However, our approaches are different. One explanation goes like this: since string theorists form a social group with strict modes of being and behaving, members are simply compelled to accept it. In other words, the AdS/CFT relationship is a matter of fact and that’s all; if you do not accept it then you are out! In contrast to this simplistic point of view, others have elaborated more on their thoughts. Lee Smolin, a vehement anti-string theorist, writes in one of his books: ‘‘I will speak of conjectures that were widely believed to be true, in spite of never having been proved. … I will speak of the pressures that young scientists feel to pursue topics sanctioned by the mainstream in order to have a decent career.’’[source] Further in the book he continues: ‘‘String theory now has such a dominant position in the academy that it is practically career suicide for young theoretical physicists not to join the field.’’ The mathematician Peter Woit, one of the most resolute anti-string theorists in the public arena, declares that ‘‘as long as the leadership of the particle theory community refuses to face up to what has happened and continues to train young theorists to work on a failed project, there is little likelihood of new ideas finding fertile ground in which to grow.’’[source] These considerations are in a sense correct. Unfortunately, in my opinion the whole argument is defective. Smolin and Woit, in different ways, try to explain why younger string theorists presume the correctness of the theory: they simply trust senior experts “in order to have a decent career.” However, they do not say why elder members also believe in the validity of the theory. Our initial question about the AdS/CFT correspondence would then be better posed if formulated as follows: why do string theorists, old and young, think the theory is valid? This reformulation of the question incorporates a temporal dimension that will prove essential to understanding the construction of facts in superstring theory. In effect, if Smolin’s description is incomplete it is because it is based on a static view of the string theory community. The idea is to determine how this “mainstream” was created, or, in other words, how the AdS/CFT became a physical fact. At the root of my discussion is the assumption that the real community of string theorists is very dynamic, with a longstanding flow of ideas and people moving constantly across the ‘‘border’’ between the ‘‘inside’’ and the ‘‘outside.’’ This has ultimately created string theory reality. A glimpse into my general approach will help the reader to follow the argument.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
Everybody is aware that theoretical physics is very difficult, and superstring theory is one of the toughest areas. In fact, string theory is so complex that experts are neither able to understand entirely the main developments nor to follow its rapid growth. In general, practitioners feel confident only in a specific subfield. People working on the AdS/CFT correspondence or twistor theory, for example, do not comprehend the whole area, even though they can be extremely competent when tackling the particular problems of the subfield. Because of this, paradoxically, those that have provided the evidence in support of superstrings do not fully grasp it. Many do not understand the AdS/CFT correspondence completely but they believe in it; it is a matter of fact. A fact in string theory is a shared belief that something is unquestionably true. What I will try to show here is that string theorists often base their beliefs on what they have seen proclaimed everywhere. This ubiquitous discourse includes technical seminars and articles, which I will call the in-in discourse, as well as popular speeches and books, the out-in discourse. Furthermore, I will try to convince the reader that string theorists start to internalize the rules of the game long before they become experts; by means of a discourse that embraces the whole society. I will dub this the out-out discourse when the information comes from non-experts, and the in-out discourse when it comes from professional physicists. Let us begin with this in-out discourse.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
The first contact a teenager has, maybe while studying in high school or even much earlier, with superstrings is crucial. The picture they build in their minds derives from their daily experiences, experiences transmitted mainly by mass media (television, magazines, internet, and newspapers) and taught in institutions (school and museums). Brian Greene’s book provides an illustration of the content of such discourse:
Moreover, in Chapter 13 we will see that string theory has recently solved a central puzzle concerning black holes, associated with the so-called Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, that has stubbornly resisted resolution by more conventional means for more than twenty-five years. This success has convinced many that string theory is in the process of giving us our deepest understanding of how the universe works.[source]
In this best-selling book, Greene affirms that string theory has been able to count the internal degrees of freedom of black holes. This comment is not isolated. Many other authors back up and complement this opinion. Stephen Hawking also talks about the connection between the physics of black holes and superstrings. In The Universe in a Nutshell he included a chapter with a suggestive title: ‘‘Brane New Worlds, Do we live on a brane or are we just holograms?’’ As is usual in most popular books on contemporary theoretical physics, this is simply an eccentric way to talk about the AdS/CFT correspondence. And, eight years after Maldacena first proposed the holographic correspondence, he writes confidently:
Physicist Stephen W. Hawking showed in the 1970s that black holes have a temperature and give off radiation, but physicists since then have been deeply puzzled. Temperature is a property of a collection of particles, but what is the collection that defines a black hole? The holographic theory solves this puzzle by showing that a black hole is equivalent to a swarm of interacting particles on the boundary surface of spacetime.[source]
Considering the host of materials devoted to the topic, and not only written but also visual, we realize immediately that the holographic correspondence is presented as ‘‘scientific truth.’’ The future theoretician builds up their representation of the theory, and its achievements and limitations, from these first accounts. Though we must admit that the idea of superstrings as shown on TV programmes and best-selling books is not the same as the theory later taught in universities and research institutes (extra dimensions are there just to cancel the quantum anomaly of the Virasoro algebra; the graviton is the action of ladder operators on the vacuum of the theory; and supersymmetry on the worldsheet is projected in the spacetime by the Gliozzi-Scherk-Olive artifice), there is a common objective in both discourses: to put forward the exactitude of superstrings. Every single partial result is part of the evidence sustaining the ultimate validity of the theory (here it is important not to forget that, as we saw, the most fundamental claims are constantly displaced by new “non-essential” challenges). In this sense, avowals about the accomplishments of the correspondence, whether in the in-out or the in-in discourses, must be understood as implicit declarations of the success of superstring theory: quantization of gravity and unification of all the forces.
Joseph Polchinski’s classic textbook, the first edition of which came out only a few months after Maldacena’s 1997 paper, briefly introduces the correspondence in a section on ‘‘Black hole quantum mechanics’’:
Very recently, a very powerful new duality proposal has emerged. … Now it appears, at least for theories with enough supersymmetry, that one can calculate amplitudes in the gauge theory by using the dual picture, where at low energy supergravity is essentially classical. If this idea is correct, it is a tremendous advance in the understanding of gauge field theories.[source]
His cautious optimism reflected the general mood of the community of experts at that time. Two years after Polchinski’s book, a new edition of Michio Kaku’s introduction to superstrings was published. For this revised edition he wrote a new chapter on black holes and the ‘‘CFT/AdS correspondence.’’[source] Maldacena’s conjecture was elbowing its way towards the highest degree of factuality, and acceptance. Nowadays the correspondence is an essential topic in any course on string theory. Let us illustrate this with some examples. On the back cover of the recent book written by John Schwarz and collaborators, Nima Arkani-Hamed, a leading string phenomenologist, comments: ‘‘This is the first comprehensive textbook on string theory to also offer an up-to-date picture of the most important theoretical developments of the last decade, including the AdS/CFT correspondence and flux compactifications, which have played a crucial role in modern efforts to made contact with experiment.’’[source] The editors of Clifford Johnson’s textbook on D-branes are of the opinion that “they have lead to many striking discoveries, including the precise microphysics underlying the thermodynamics behaviour of certain black holes, and remarkable holographic dualities between large N-gauge theories and gravity.’’[source] In the chapter ‘‘String thermodynamics and black holes,’’ Zwiebach declares:
It should be emphasized that the correspondence has not yet been proven. Rather, it was originally motivated by some heuristic arguments and has since been tested extensively. There are no grounds to suspect that it fails to hold.[source]
… “there are no grounds to suspect that it fails to hold.”
The discussion above suggests that many string theorists have begun their careers with a biased view of the subject. How they conceive the theory during their formative years depends crucially on previous contact with materials intended for the general public and, later on, on the systematic training given by senior members of the community. We have seen how these two stages in the education of future string theorists coincide at one point: they present new subjects as confirmations of the most fundamental claims of the theory. The theory has succeeded in: quantizing gravity and unifying all the fundamental forces of nature. In addition, it explains the thermodynamics of black holes and has also demonstrated a precise gravity/particle physics correspondence. This is what is taught. Even though young string theorists can feel sometimes uncomfortable with the weakness of some arguments, the challenge usually exceeds their skills. Moreover, in such a competitive field there is no time to digress by asking fundamental questions. When finally the young researcher becomes a full member, with many more resources at hand to tackle fundamental issues, it turns out that they are probably working on a specific topic with its own problems. And, not surprisingly, all these investigations assume the validity of the basic claims of the theory. The once controversial claims are no more questioned; they have been internalized as matters of fact. Eventually, the young researcher becomes an accomplished theoretician; it is now their turn to protect the theory and contribute fervently to the in-out discourse. This final step consolidates further the scientific fact and, very importantly, guarantees the reproduction of well-trained newcomers. This long and tortuous process of internalizing the rules of the game is sociological, but unavoidably also psychological. As I said above, a fact in string theory is a deep and sincere belief, and nobody can dispute certain issues without at the same time denying their own self.
So far I have illustrated two discourses that have fostered the confirmation of string theory. The first resides largely within the physics community; what I have called the in-in discourse. The second embraces the public at large. I dubbed this the in-out discourse. And, by definition, both of them involve the communication of ideas; ideas that define what string theory is and what it means to be a string theorist. We have also seen that when the ideas are broadly diffused, as in the in-out discourse, they can re-enter as matters of fact. Newcomers embody them. This process then accelerates the stabilization of the scientific fact. I will name the combination of these two processes the in-out-•••-in process. The three points are included to signify the embodiment of the discourse. This intermediate step is a mixture of discourse and person, namely, it represents the potentiality that persons from the ‘‘outside’’ who have embodied the ‘‘internal’’ discourse have to modify the scientific explanation. Due to its significance, the in-out-•••-in process is at the heart of my history of superstring theory.
Many years ago the sociologist of science Bruno Latour used a similar construct to understand Pasteur’s studies of anthrax.[source] Both approaches blur the boundary between the inside and the outside. Nevertheless, there are crucial differences between the two. Mainly, the displacements from the inside to the outside and back to the inside as I see them in string theory are continuous and not discrete. String theorists do not go like Pasteur, in Latour’s explanation, to a kind of farm to test the theory and then go back to their laboratories to improve the model for future applications. Latour says that Pasteur brings the laboratory with him to the farm and then in turn, the farm to the laboratory. In string theory we observe a more complicated phenomenon. Firstly, rather than going to a farm, string theorists propagate ideas. Secondly, we do not deal with a single person but with a large community, instead. From the most influential researcher to the most humble undergraduate student, all of them contribute to the in-out discourse. Thirdly, the ideas re-enter the field thanks to a continuous flow of newcomers (in-out-•••-in process). As we will see in the next section, this last point is even more convoluted. The ideas oriented towards public audiences not only re-enter the field thanks to the arrival of new students but by means of immaterial actors such as TV programmes, popular press, and institutional campaigns. To be clear, I am talking about the role of popular science in the constitution and consolidation of scientific explanations. As a consequence of these displacements the boundary between the inside and the outside is not just blurred after a set of discrete steps but at every moment; and not only by a person but by many people and countless ideas.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
What I’ve described in this section is an alternative strategy of validation that string theorists have persistently employed in order to preserve what they consider a worthwhile field of research. The purpose of this is to protect the theory from attacks from defenders of contending models; attacks due in part to theoretical and experimental shortcomings. It is not an exaggeration to say that string theory uses propaganda, more or less as Galileo did in his times: ‘‘He uses psychological tricks in addition to whatever intellectual reasons he has to offer. These tricks are very successful: they lead him to victory.’’[source] String theorists too have expanded the circle of believers to include the lay public. As would have been expected, string theorists have been bitterly criticized for using this stratagem: ‘‘The theory has been spectacularly successful on one front, that of public relations.’’[source] But the same could be said, in different degrees, about any other scientific theory; including Galileo’s physics as well as the theories proposed by anti-string theorists. Finally, it should be said that other proposals advanced thus far to quantize gravity and to unify the fundamental forces are not as developed as superstrings. Indeed, these results are less promising than those obtained by string methods. The reason for the disagreement between the two groups is not only about concrete results, but, at least as they see it, about broader conceptions of science. This explains why the “outside” has been the arena for struggles between string and anti-string theorists.
*******You can read this blog for free! Please, do not copy its content.*******
________________________________________________________________________
SELECTED READINGS FOR ESSAY 1 (III)
SELECTED READINGS FOR ESSAY 1 (III)
________________________________________________________________________
