On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Tim Brody wrote: > http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-8/p35.html > > "Some of my colleagues in Santa Barbara--the string theorists, for > example, and several of my coworkers in condensed matter theory as > well--insist that they don't need The Physical Review. For research > purposes, they don't need refereed print journals at all. They are > producing remarkable results this way, so I take them very seriously." > > "What they are doing is using the Los Alamos e-print archive for all of > their research communications. They check it every day for new > information. They post all their papers there, cite references by archive > number, use the search engine to find other papers, and need little or no > other publication services." > > I don't know whether "string theory" is hep-th, but it would look like a > credible explanation why hep-th has such high "hits" for red-links, > compared to hep-ph (which is a area of similar size and lineage). > > Perhaps this is a rule that can be extended to all theoretical science - > that theory does not demand the same level of "invisible hand" rigour as > more practical research.
Elite string theorists are a small, specialized group. Their numbers and stature are about comparable with the scale of all of science in the 17th/18th century, where the few practitioners world-wide (Newton, Leibniz, etc.) at any time could communicate their research by simply writing letters to one another. This is neither representative of research as a whole today, nor will it scale (in my opinion). Remember "Simon-says": We should definitely find out (but not necessarily believe) what people SAY they are doing, and why. We should also find out what they DO do, and what others do/say too. Then let's piece together the picture objectively. The string theorists are definitely a piece of the whole picture, but equally definitely not a representative microcosm of it! [Nor is "theory" in general the dividing line, I think, for there are more and less populated, more and less elite areas of theory too -- in my (Stevan-says) opinion...] Cheers, Stevan -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM
