My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer.
Brian GreeneRead
Very much, string theory is simply a work in progress. What we are inching toward every day are predictions that within the realm of current technology we hope to test. It's not like we're working on a theory that is permanently beyond experiment. That would be philosophy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
String theory is an evolving idea in physics that aims to be testable with current technology.
In this quote, Brian Greene emphasizes that string theory, while still developing, is grounded in scientific inquiry that aspires to yield experimental predictions. He contrasts it with philosophical theories, suggesting that scientific theories like string theory should ultimately be subject to empirical testing, reflecting the dynamic nature of scientific exploration.
Themes
String TheoryScienceExperimentTheoryPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on scientific advancements where theories are discussed.
More from Brian Greene
All quotes →All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.
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According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age.
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So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.
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Black holes, we all know, are these regions where if an object falls in, it can't get out, but the puzzle that many struggled with over the decades is, what happens to the information that an object contains when it falls into a black hole. Is it simply lost?
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Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
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