Those of you interested in the esoterica of modern physics might like to read this article by Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, and the author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos.
Greene talks about the present state of string theory and the criticism it is weathering for its inability so far to come up with verifiable predictions. It's a very interesting piece which ends with this:
String theory continues to offer profound breadth and enormous potential. It has the capacity to complete the Einsteinian revolution and could very well be the concluding chapter in our species' age-old quest to understand the deepest workings of the cosmos. Will we ever reach that goal? I don't know. But that's both the wonder and the angst of a life in science. Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.
I can't help but wonder why tolerating uncertainty is okay for scientists who work in the realm of the testable and empirical but not okay for religious believers who are constantly admonished by such as Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins that their beliefs are untenable precisely because there's too great an element of uncertainty in them.
It's also worth noting that string theory is a perfectly acceptable topic for discussion in high school physics classes even though, because it's not testable, it does not meet the criteria of a scientific theory. Yet intelligent design, even though it, too, "could very well be the concluding chapter in our species' age-old quest to understand the deepest workings of the cosmos," is ruled out of bounds in public schools because it's allegedly not testable. Very strange.
