The Majesty and Misery of String Theory

by

Glenn Statile

1.  SCIENCE FACT OR SCIENCE FICTION

A great crooner, if not exactly a great philosopher of science, named Frank Sinatra once sang about having the whole world on a string.  And as we all know song lyrics can sometimes evoke a rather accurate picture of real life, while at other times they venture into altogether imaginative and existentially uncharted territory.  Adopting a perhaps excessively critical attitude it is still by no means unfair to say that string theory is a theory en route to nowhere.  It is a theory which, at its best, could conceivably capture the essence of material reality at its deepest level; or, at its worst, might be nothing more than an overblown tale with an overly complicated mathematical storyline.   It is thought by many to represent a colossal attempt to trade atomism in for a theoretical framework involving multiple dimensions and vibrating Planck length pieces of primal string which supersede point particles as the basic building blocks of nature.  String cognoscenti might also note that in recent years their theory has been enveloped within an even more extensive theoretical superstructure known as M-Theory which peddles in such exotica as multiple universes that are causally unconnected to our own.