Physicists (String Theorists) and Philosophers Debate the Scientific Method

StartsWithABang writes: One of the most damning, albeit accurate, condemnations of String Theory that has been leveled at it is that it's untestable, non-empirical, and offers no concrete predictions or methods of falsification. Yet some have attempted to address this failing not by coming up with concrete predictions or falsifiable tests, but by redefining what is meant by theory confirmation. Many physicists and philosophers have jumped into this debate, and a recently completed workshop has produced no agreements, but lots of interesting perspectives being live blogged by a physicist. Also weighing in is a philosopher in three separate parts.

Comments

String Theorists Are Not Physicists

[sexconker]

String theorists are not physicists. They are mathturbators, at best.

Re: Trust the philosopher

[PopeRatzo]

Honest to God, I'm pretty surprised at how much ignorance there is about philosophy. This is where the utility of a classical education comes in. Fucking engineers. The worship of science and scientists without understanding that there is a context in which science exists. And above science is Mathematics. And just above Mathematics is Philosophy.

Why you should read absolutely read the article

[phantomfive]

The 'new' tests for measuring the quality of a hypothesis are quoted here from the article, and I think they certainly have value:

This method is used during the development of a theory and is based on collecting indications which increase the physicists’ confidence that a theory describes nature. These indications are, for example, the amount (or absence of) alternative solutions to a problem, the degree by which a theory is connected to already confirmed theories, and the amount of unexpected insights that the theories give rise to.

However, the reason you should read the article is because it manages to reasonably work this image into the discussion.

Mod parent down

[Prune]

Who are you going to listen to, dear readers? David Gross, who won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering asymptotic freedom, or Slashdot's very own Roger W Moore, who won ... a few points from intellectually lazy moderators who cheered Mr Moore's eloquent dismissal of the Nobel-winning particle physicist's ideas as "tripe" and "absolutely no sense"?