[lit-ideas] Re: Science as Aesthetics?
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 09 May 2009 12:47:21 -0400
JLS: I'm just not sure if we want to say of this that
it constitutes an 'aesthetic' if by that we are
going to understand
_another_ science, this time of _beauty_.
Dr. Witten, one of the great physicists working in
superstring theory, contends that it must be true
*because* the mathematics is too beautiful not to
be true. On the other hand, it is an *untestable*
theory. It is like the Zahir in Borges, a map of
the world that replaces the world, leaving one to
wonder which is the world and which is the Zahir.
If beauty is the criteria of (this) scientific
truth (i.e., a theory of "everything") then what
is Witten trading here? Mathematical aesthetics?
After all, science requires verification and
superstring cannot be verified because we cannot
build a 1,000 light-year wide superconducting
supercollider. Even the measly, pint-sized
supercollider was defeated by Congress in 1993.
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