On functional freedom and Penrose's critiques of string theory

2025/09/25 by Krátký, Matěj, Read, James
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.21515

Abstract

In his The Road to Reality as well as in his Fashion, Faith and Fantasy, Roger Penrose criticises string theory and its practitioners from a variety of angles ranging from conceptual, technical, and methodological objections to sociological observations about the string theoretic scientific community. In this article, we assess Penrose's conceptual/technical objections to string theory, focussing in particular upon those which invoke the notion of `functional freedom'. In general, we do not find these arguments to be successful.

Citations

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• Dualities of Fields and Strings
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