The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions [2008, 2011] by David Berlinski

Author:David Berlinski [Berlinski, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books [ebook]
Published: 2008-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

In the years that followed—roughly from the late 1970s until the present—string theory expanded and grew great. Difficulties appeared and were surmounted, whereupon new difficulties appeared. Physicists were obligated to undertake very difficult calculations with respect to a theory that they did not completely understand. Their work revealed strange coincidences and tantalizing suggestions of a deeper form of unity. By the early part of the twenty-first century, they could look back on two string theoretic revolutions, and while both advanced the cause, neither brought the goal of a single, clearly stated final theory within reach.

The reaction, although slow in coming, was also inevitable. String theory was criticized in the popular press by a distinguished theoretical physicist and a mathematician. In The Trouble with Physics, written by Lee Smolin, and Not Even Wrong, by Peter Woit, string theory was examined with some sympathy and found wanting. Neither author could find a theory in the place where theoreticians said a theory should be, and both authors noted with some asperity that string theory had no apparent connections to experiment and that none were in prospect. Woit went so far as to observe that the mathematical structure on which the theory rested, far from being a thing of great elegance, was the most horrible thing he had ever seen.

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