> On Dec 10, 2016, at 4:13 PM, Gary Richmond <[email protected]> wrote: > > Helmut wrote: > > The hypothesis is dark matter, but there is no dark matter available for > experiments. Also the string theory is not verifiable with experiments, > because the hypothetic strings are smaller than anything detectable. So > nowadays physics is somehow comparable with medieval scholastic theology. > > Sometimes some of these postmodern theories (how many string theories have > been proposed now?--I think over 12; and 'dark matter' seems almost an > oxymoron), many of these mathematical-physical theories seem to me more > closely related to science fiction than to science. It doesn't mean that some > of them might not be 'true', but in at least certain cases (such as string > theory) there's no way in which we'll ever know.
I’m fairly sure the twelve main string theories were shown quite some time ago to either be isomorphic or proper subsets of the others. Dark matter to me is more interesting for the exact opposite reason you outline. It’s purely empirical with little successful theoretical explanation for it. (Many theories like MOND have had sufficient problems so they’ve been discarded) I’m not sure I’d call any of these postmodern by the way. Although I’ve come to hate that term. Once upon a time before Sokal I thought the term was helpful despite a lot of shoddy thinking being done by some under the rubric — now it’s just misleading and nearly purely pejorative. I’m regularly shocked when I find someone using the term for themselves in a positive sense. (Usually due to being perhaps unaware of how most people even in academics view the term)
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