Physicist and Nobel laureate, Princeton University.
Is string theory a futile exercise as physics, as I believe it to
be? It is an interesting mathematical specialty and has
produced and will produce mathematics useful in other
contexts, but it seems no more vital as mathematics than
other areas of very abstract or specialized math, and doesn't
on that basis justify the incredible amount of effort expended
on it.
My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in
hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any
adequate experimental guidance. It proposes that Nature is the way we
would like it to be rather than the way we see it to be; and it is
improbable that Nature thinks the same way we do.
The sad thing is that, as several young would-be theorists have
explained to me, it is so highly developed that it is a full-time job just
to keep up with it. That means that other avenues are not being
explored by the bright, imaginative young people, and that alternative
career paths are blocked.
