2016/09/02 by Carlo Rovelli, Rovelli, Carlo · 2 voices · 1 citation
#physics.hist-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1609.01966
In the book "String Theory and the Scientific Method", Richard Dawid describes a few of the many non-empirical arguments that motivate theoretical physicists' confidence in a theory, taking string theory as case study. I argue that excessive reliance on non-empirical evidence compromises the reliability of science, and that precisely the case of string theory well illustrates this danger.