Antiplastic

You'd have to agree that without the quotes its hard to tell.

Frame or no frame, it remains a fact that a theory is simply an explanation for a set of facts, and a crappy theory or unparsimonious theory or difficult-to-test theory is still a theory.

James T

Bait and switch, I thought you were supporting the theyeti with your ... Well.

theyeti

I'm afraid you are wrong. There are no formal prerequisites for what makes up a scientific theory or for what the precise meaning of "theory" is. There may be colloquial ones, but definitely not formal. Philosophers of science have been trying to come up with such things for decades, and after numerous attempts that were clearly flawed (e.g. Popper) they've basically reached the conclusion that it's not going to happen. There are good scientific practices and bad ones, commonly used colloquial definitions for words like "theory" (for which there are always exceptions), but there is no formalized system for determining when something becomes scientific or for when it reaches the exalted status of "theory".

This is not just semantics either; lots and lots of things in science have a formalized nomenclature. Off the top of my head, that would include biological taxonomy, atomic elements, extrasolar planets, chemical structures, minerals, species names, types of clouds, psychiatric disorders, and... well, you get the idea. In every one of these examples there is a well-defined and concise set of rules to determine what something is to be called and what category it fits into. There are even governing bodies to resolves disputes and eliminate any possibility of ambiguity. This is what it means to have a formalized nomenclature.

There is no such nomenclature for theory, hypothesis, law, etc., and if there were, it would create a morass of historical inconsistencies. Fact is, people are free to use these terms as they see fit. There is, and always has been, and always will be, a great deal of ambiguity in how those terms are used. That's okay. There is no reason why we can't debate the merits of a scientific idea without agreeing on what specific label to attach to it. If the purpose here is to improve communication, then the proper thing to do is to stop obsessing over whether or not String Theory is a "theory" and instead discuss its merits or lack thereof.

theyeti

Archimedes

Who here actually knows enough about string theory or understands it enough to make claims about it validity or status? As far as I can tell, it's a pretty esoteric branch of physics and requires some seriously high level mathematics and physics to really appreciate what it's really all about.

Agrajag

Actually there is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory

As you can see there are two meanings for the word theory, one denotes a testable scientific proposition, and the other is an 'idea', called in scientific parlance a hypothesis.

and I quote...
"The term theory is regularly stretched to refer to speculation which is currently unverifiable. Examples are string theory and various theories of everything. In the strict sense, the term theory should only be used when describing a model that is derived from experimental evidence and is provable (or disprovable). It is considered sufficient for the model to be in principle testable at some undetermined point in the future."

As has been pointed out string 'theorists' are using the term in the general and commonly accepted sense rather than in the accurate scientific sense.
It may seem like a moot point to you, but sloppy use of language with all it's attendant ambiguities is the royal road to confusion, and I frankly do not buy the idea that a hypothesis can be called a theory solely on the basis that it might be testable in the future ... maybe.

Open that door and every crank with a desire to elevate their pet lunacies to the same level as established scientific models can call their pseudo-scientific drivel a 'theory'.

James T

This looks like Argument_from_ignorance, a fallacy!

Archimedes

It wasn't an argument at all, it was a question. I wonder how many people who have voted so far genuinely understand string theory, it's implications and it's current status.

James T

Archimedes, personally my own level of understanding is low. I've read what I consider to be knowledgeable commentators on the issue. They tend to criticise string theory not in terms of it's lack of internal rigour, but in a lack of its utility in describing the world.

One criticism I have seen of it is that it is not even wrong, faint praise eh. So suggestions that we have to understand the internal complexity to deny it are an appeal to ignorance, argumentum ad ignorantum in other words, and insufficiently compelling to make me feel that string theory is valid.

Interestingly though, if string theory were a mathematical exercise, it might fit nicely alongside some other esoteric mathematical pursuits. Perhaps it will find a home in time that actually links it to the real world, though this might not be as the TOE that they hope it is.

Archimedes

I don't really have a strong opinion on it myself, I've only read Brian Greene's book and seen his documentary series, but I don't know what to think really about it.

I just think that people have a tendency to have too strong feelings about things that they really don't fundamentally understand. I'm an atheist and I really don't like it when fellow atheists try to dismiss God in online debates by saying that the universe can be explained by a quantum fluctuation or two branes colliding or other ideas they can't possibly understand, or are still very borderline. It's okay for us laymen to discuss it or ask questions of the experts, but all too often, people accept or dismiss things that are way out of their league to really appreciate.

But I digress, we're not talking about the origin of the universe or God, I'm just not sure what the value is of a bunch of laymen discussing cutting edge maths and physics that has been watered down and simplified to levels for popular consumption that I think the experts would say doesn't do any justice to the actual maths or science involved.

Friar Bellows

Welcome to the internet.