> So in your judgement are string theories best regarded as science or
> as metaphysics.
given this choice, my take (i'm not a string theorist!) would be that string theories are rich, promising, albeit speculative scientific paths rather than metaphysics.
-- supersymmetry is a nice idea consonant with current known
symmetries.
-- the string interaction cartoons have intuitive appeal.
-- that vibration modes of higher dimensional objects represent the
particle garden seems a natural hypothesis to me somehow.
-- interesting question: are there dimensions we are not aware of
because we have not (yet) the means of production (nee energies) to
explore them?
of course, there IS a lot of metaphysical speculation surrounding the ideas of superstring (and M-brane) theories. and what kind of productive modes would a society be organized about to say "enough already with 'The God Particle' books!"
in the context of physics, i think of metaphysics more as the endless speculation on meaning of copenhagen interpretation, uncertainty principles, extension of quantum ideas to everything under the sun, etc.
> given the apparent fact that they do not seem to admit to
> experimental verification or falsification?
see my previous post.
Greene for example argues that black holes are not directly verifiable either, but can be verified indirectly through their interactions with surrounding material and rays. i'm ok with that for now.
> As I recall, for a number of years Sheldon Glashow criticized them
> on precisely that ground.
yes, Glashow is one critic. i read he is at BU now. have you seen him lecture?
les schaffer
p.s.: Rakesh Bhandari forwarded to me a quite interesting article which it would be nice to find time to comment on later. here is a URL:
http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/BohmHome/sokalhoax.html