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Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser write in the NYT that two leading researchers, George Ellis and Joseph Silk, recently published a controversial piece called "Scientific Method: Defend the Integrity of Physics" that criticized a newfound willingness among some scientists to explicitly set aside the need for experimental confirmation of today's most ambitious cosmic theories — so long as those theories are "sufficiently elegant and explanatory." Whether or not you agree with them, Ellis and Silk have identified a mounting concern in fundamental physics: Today, our most ambitious science can seem at odds with the empirical methodology that has historically given physics its credibility:
Chief among the 'elegance will suffice' advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the 'only game in town' capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the 'many worlds' version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts. These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man's-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.
Richard Dawid argues that physics, or at least parts of it, are about to enter an era of post-empirical science. "How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally?" ask Frank and Gleiser. "Are superstrings and the multiverse, painstakingly theorized by hundreds of brilliant scientists, anything more than modern-day epicycles?"
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:45AM
Sometimes entirely imaginary constructs are called into being just to balance some equation.
Which isn't a bad thing since the entirely imaginary doesn't necessarily stay that way. That approach lead to complex numbers, anti-electrons (depending on context, could be positrons or electron holes), and vibration modes/harmonics (eg, the harmonics of spherical shells which led to theoretical validation of the periodic table).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday June 07 2015, @11:50AM
But its faith based.
Last time we were in the same pickle, luckily, theory developed the idea that waving copper coils thru a magnetic field would result in all kinds of WTF and it was trivially easy to build and they were correct and all kinds of fun developed.
We're stuck the same way so we'll charge on in blind faith that surely, something ridiculously obscure at this time will drop out of the equations and we can test it. Someday. And it'll be buildable at our level of technology and economy. Because otherwise the narrative would suck and those stories are no fun.
However, reality is under no obligation to trigger the famous human meme/bug of religious faith. This time around throwing virgins into the volcano might not work because the volcano is, and never really was, under any obligation to care.
There's a side dish of self fulfilling prophesy where historical progress obviously happened and the next step was always in reach. Reality is under no obligation to keep providing next steps or next steps that are in reach. Blind religious faith requires those steps exist and are in reach. What can't go on forever eventually stops. Therefore at some point the blind religious faith will be disappointed. There seems no reason they can't be disappointed today rather than in the unspecified future.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 07 2015, @02:17PM
We're stuck the same way so we'll charge on in blind faith that surely, something ridiculously obscure at this time will drop out of the equations and we can test it.
Faith is a lot less faith-based when it's based on a process that has worked before.