List, A good short report of a discussion of a workshop involving several prominent theoretical physicists and philosophers of science held at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich last December on the importance of Popperian falsifiability (or not) in consideration of, in particular, string theory and multiverse theory was published last December in *Scientific American:* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-string-theory-science/
For example, one reads in the report: Rovelli [a theoretical physicist at Aix-Marseille University in France] . . . stressed the need for a clear distinction between scientific theories that are well established by experiments and those that are speculative. But while Rovelli would most likely suggest that multiverse cosmology could never be tested in principle, he remarks, somewhat along the lines of the argumentation Ben employed, that it is hardly a waste of people's time to be developing string theory, at least as a kind of heuristic. And, indeed, Ben has gotten me thinking that string theory may indeed *someday* be testable (multiverse cosmology, not so much so). So, my own thinking on this seems already to be evolving. Still, I can't say that I approve of the loose way in which 'science fiction' has been employed by some in this thread. The distinction between science and science fiction is not one I imagine that I'm likely dispense with any time soon. Best, Gary R [image: Gary Richmond] *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York* *C 745* *718 482-5690* On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 4:48 PM, Clark Goble <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Dec 12, 2016, at 12:20 PM, Jerry LR Chandler < > [email protected]> wrote: > > One critical fact that is “the elephant in the room” is the intrinsic > asymmetry of nearly all biomolecules. Life Itself depends on the > asymmetries entailed from parent to offspring and the offsprings capacity > to reproduce these quantum asymmetries through the energetic casual > electric field relations among discrete molecules. (This is the > well-established quantum physics of optical isomers, of the handedness of > biophilic and biogenic hyle.) > > > > Could you expand on this? Even without adopting something like string > theory why couldn’t this be explained by early symmetry breaking and the > usual weak anthropic reasoning? i.e. we need an universe where life was > possible to make the argument about which symmetries matter. The universes > with different symmetries couldn’t produce people to make that argument. > > I recognize there’s a certain similarity between weakly anthropic > reasoning and the problems of string theory. The difference is that there > seems to be far more evidence for symmetry breaking in the early universe > and thermodynamic arguments for the same. (Even if supersymmetry seems to > have been falsified by recent collider data) > > > > > > > ----------------------------- > PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON > PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to > [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L > but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the > BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm > . > > > > > >
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