[lit-ideas] Re: Science as Aesthetics?
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 May 2009 16:04:26 +0000 (GMT)
--- On Wed, 13/5/09, John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Unless I am much mistaken, no physicist would be
> taking superstring theory seriously if the math weren't
> consistent with already established findings predicted by
> previous theories. The testable or not issue refers to the
> ability to perform experiments that would produce findings
> demonstrating the validity of predictions made by
> superstring theory that are not made by other theories.
This seems plausible to me: i.e. that the issue is whether a 'differential
prediction' can be derived from the theory, not whether the theory is
consistent with known observations. However, while this would mean the theory
is testable (and therefore Wittens is wrong to suggest otherwise), it would
mean it is not open (as yet) to a test that would that would decide between it
and alternatives.
The view that it is better than alternatives, and true or truer, on aesthetic
grounds is not itself a testable claim but a metaphysical one, however. Compare
the view that whatever the laws of nature are they are simpler than the most
possibly complex laws could be: this is a metaphysical faith that the universe
has a simpler rather than most complex structure. It is vague a faith and taken
too far no doubt false as we could surely conceive of simpler 'laws' than those
we currently posit: but it does reflect a confidence that the universe is
comprehensible (when in fact its true complexity may outfox even the greatest
human minds) and such a belief may motivate research, so it is not surprising
that researchers work with some such (perhaps unconscious) belief. That a true
theory will also be an aesthetically pleasing one perhaps reflects a similiar
understandable and motivating metaphysical belief.
In
> this respect, superstring theory is a different sort of
> beast from aesthetic theories that have no indisputable
> results at all to explain.
This difference is surely related to aesthetic judgments being ones of value
that pertain to observable facts but whose validlity cannot be reduced to or
derived from observable facts: similar to 'ethics' in this respect, aesthetics
may be said to be autonomous of the purely empirical realm of the observable.
The aesthetic values in the case of string theory must, from a scientific POV,
be secondary to its ability to 'explain', or be consistent with, observable
facts - and this differentiates the role of aesthetic values in scientific
research from their role in the arts where such values are primary not
secondary.
Dnl
Ldn
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